
I ■ * A 

Booklii_4. 



Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT* 




Rev. John Bancroft Devins, D.D., 



LL.D. 



John Bancroft Devins 

A True Greatheart 



Reminiscences by 

REV. E. C. RAY, D.D. 
With Supplementary Chapters 



NEW YORK: 124 East 28th Street 
LONDON: 47 Paternoster Row, E. C. 
1912 



Copyright, 19 12, by 

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF 
YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 



©CI.A328788 

?M3 ( 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The reminiscences in this book are not a 
biography, but a record of the salient events 
and characteristics of Dr. Devins's life and 
personality as recalled by a close friend of 
many years, the Reverend E. C. Ray, D.D., 
of Santa Barbara, California; a series of 
" moving pictures " rather than a meticulous 
and balanced history. The writer desires to 
acknowledge gratefully his obligation to 
Mrs. Devins for the greatest possible assist- 
ance; and to express his hope that the remi- 
niscences, though unworthy of their great 
subject, may yet be useful in recalling to his 
friends some vivid memories, and in sug- 
gesting to others how a life encompassed with 
difficulties may be made glorious and happy 
and filled with the spirit and the works of 
Jesus Christ. Details of his earlier years, 
so amazing, so pathetic, so sad to those to 
whom Dr. Devins was most dear — just as 
the long past sufferings of our Lord, essen- 
tial to His power and glory, hurt our hearts 
now — are given, in connection with what he 
afterwards accomplished only as an inspira- 
tion to those who are handicapped at the 
start. As Dr. Devins shrank from exploit- 



PREFATORY NOTE 



ing his own story, these things would never 
have been written were it not that he ex- 
pressed to his wife, and in a letter to the 
writer, his willingness that after his death 
these reminiscences be written for the benefit 
of those who begin life under similar disad- 
vantages. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 


P AOF 
Jr rxyjiji 


I 


The Start and the Finish . 


7 


II 


Getting Religion .... 


14 


III 


Getting Education ... 


. 20 


IV 


Looking Backward . . 


' 25 


V 


The First Day in New York . 


. 34 


VI 


Life in Elizabeth, N. J. . 


40 


VII 




46 


VIII 


The "Tribune" 


■ 52 


IX 


Marriage and Seminary . 


• 57 


X 




62 


XI 


The Hungarian Widow . . . 


70 


XII 


Hungary 


76 


XIII 




81 


XIV 




87 


XV 


More Personal Work 


95 


XVI 


The Finish and the New Start 


103 


XVII 




no 


XVIII 




125 


XIX 


Resolutions and Letters 


148 




His Favorite Poem . . . . 


165 



CHAPTER I 



THE START AND THE FINISH 

A sturdy lad walked into the hamlet of 
Vernon Center, Oneida County, New York, 
on a March morning in 1873. He had 
walked far, carrying all his worldly posses- 
sions, easily, in a very small bundle. He 
had left home because home failed to give 
him two things he resolved to have — re- 
ligion and education. Religion he had, deep 
down in the heart of him; but he had not the 
forms of it and did not know that he had it 
at all, and he would have it or die. He 
walked on the quest of the Holy Grail. Of 
education he had but little ; but the root of it 
was in him, that unappeasable hunger, com- 
bined with unalterable resolution and will- 
ingness to work like a slave, lacking in so 
many who have all opportunities. This is 
the pledge of power for those who are born 
with it or have it awakened in them. He 
was out walking for wisdom. 

What else had he in capital to make a 
career for himself? A name? Half of 
one. He was John. John what? His 
adoptive parents, who had taken him an in- 

7 



8 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



fant from the Home for the Friendless in 
New York City, had given him their last 
name, and with that name he walked into 
Vernon Center. Let us call it Pachman — 
John Pachman. No, he had no capital but 
himself. Not trying now to look inside of 
the boy, into his brain and heart, but letting 
them speak for themselves in these reminis- 
cences, let us inventory his external assets at 
that time. Clothes — nothing good to be 
said; they were few, cheap, misfits, worn. 
Body — short, square built, stocky, muscles 
of size and of steel, shoulders of Atlas, a 
shock of reddish hair cut under a bowl, a per- 
vasive crop of large freckles, head rather 
small and not at all promising, shy manner, 
extraordinary capability for blushing and 
none for taking care of his hands and feet 
in social groups containing well-dressed or fe- 
male persons, a very rapid, half-articulated 
speech difficult to understand. 

But he had two things that distinguished 
him from most other people and suggested 
the promise of all that he was to be. His 
form was always erect and his carriage free, 
unlike the attitudes and gaits usually acquired 
in farm occupations. He never slouched in 
his life. He stood up, sat down, walked, 
ran, fell, got up again, all with the graceful 
power of an athlete. There was nobody else 



THE START AND THE FINISH 9 



in the community like him. Physical perfec- 
tion, perfect health, mental balance and moral 
strength seemed to shout themselves through 
him to the world. Everybody felt, uncon- 
sciously, the message his body spoke. It won 
instant respect, awing the lawless, winning the 
well-meaning, inspiring confidence in every- 
one. 

But his wonderful eyes ! Of a soft dark 
brown and very large, their first noticeable 
characteristic was their extraordinary beauty, 
unsurpassed, in the judgment of his friends, 
by any other eyes. Next, everybody felt that 
they were clean, transparent windows of his 
soul, capable of expressing any emotion pos- 
sible to a human spirit. They could flash 
with anger like lightning strokes, showing a 
furnace of wrath within. They could speak 
a scorn as biting as aqua fortis. But they 
commonly glowed with kindness, unspeakable 
affection and good-will, honesty unquestion- 
able and absolutely firm, truthfulness as clear 
as heaven's blue, and courage that no one 
looking into them would think of trying to 
weaken. What a great, strong, soaring, self- 
controlled, trusty, dependable, loving soul 
looked out of those windows ! Everybody 
felt that at once all through his life. 

What had the little hamlet, nine miles from 
its railroad station at Oneida, to offer this 



io JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



lad? Two general stores, a smithy, a tiny 
post-office in the tailor's shop, Methodist and 
Presbyterian churches on adjacent corners 
facing the small central square, a tavern of 
bad repute, a few modest dwellings with one 
comparatively palatial one — the summer 
home of a rich distiller from Buffalo — and 
farmhouses on all the out-radiating roads. 
What did John make of his opportunities? 

He worked his way through New York 
University and Union Theological Seminary, 
later receiving earned degrees of A.B. and 
A.M. from the former institution, and from 
other institutions the honorary degrees of Doc- 
tor of Divinity and Doctor of Laws. He 
was a member of the city staff, New York Tri- 
bune, 1880-8 ; corresponding secretary, Amer- 
ican Institute of Christian Philosophy, and 
editor of its magazine, Christian Thought, 
1890-6; chairman Sub-committee on Sanita- 
tion, East Side Relief Work, 1893-4; founder 
and first president, Federation of East Side 
Workers, 1894; founder and president, 
New York Employment Society, 1894; chair- 
man, Cooper Union Labor Bureau, 1895; 
manager, New York Association for Improv- 
ing the Condition of the Poor, 1895; mem- 
ber Public Lecture Corps, New York Board 
of Education, 1896; member National Fed- 
eration of Churches and Christian Workers, 



THE START AND THE FINISH n 



1901-8; managing editor, New York Ob- 
server, 1898-1902; editor and president, New 
York Observer Company, 1902; member 
National Civic Federation, 1902; official 
representative, Evangelistic Committee of 
General Assembly, Presbyterian Church, 
U. S. A., on trip around the world, 1903-4; 
speaker of International Sunday School Com- 
mittee at Jerusalem Convention, 1904; mem- 
ber General Assembly's Committee on Sea- 
men and Soldiers, 1904-8 ; first fraternal dele- 
gate of New York Presbytery to Central 
Federated Labor Union, 1904-8; managing 
editor, The Bible Record, 1904-6; trustee 
(by appointment of the Governor), New 
York State Hospital for Incipient Pulmonary 
Tuberculosis, Ray Brook, N. Y., 1905-19 10; 
and secretary of the Board, 1906-8; member 
Executive Committee, Inter-church Confer- 
ence on Federation, and chairman of its Press 
Committee, 1903; member Child Labor 
Committee, 1906; member the College 
Board of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., 
1906-8; life member American Bible Society, 
1907; member National Vacation Bible 
School Committee, 1907; trustee and vice- 
president, Industrial Christian Alliance for 
the U. S. A., 1907; secretary, Presbyterian 
Union of New York, 1907; trustee, Evan- 
gelical Alliance, U. S. A., 1907; manager, 



12 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



Tribune Fresh Air Fund, 1907; chairman, 
Committee on Literature and Education, Fed- 
eral Council of Churches of Christ in Amer- 
ica, 1908; corporate member, China Indus- 
trial Union, 1908; counselor, Female Guard- 
ian Society and Home for the Friendless, 
1908; advisory member, Working Girls' Va- 
cation Society, 1908; trustee, American Sea- 
men's Friend Society, 1908 ; member National 
Geographical Society, Washington, 1908; 
member Victoria Institute, London, 1908; or- 
ganizer Orient Travel League for Bible Stu- 
dents and Travelers, 1909; member Bible 
Study Union, 1909. Initial dates for the fol- 
lowing are lacking: Member Central Bureau 
of Colored Fresh Air Agencies; trustee, 
Christ's Mission; chairman, Prison Gate Mis- 
sion; lecturer of the New York Board of Edu- 
cation on Sociology, Literature and Travel; 
manager, New York Sunday School Associa- 
tion, and chairman of its Committee on Public 
Buildings; honorary secretary for New York- 
Egypt Exploration Fund; author of " Blind 
Jennie," " The Church and the City Prob- 
lem " (1895), " An Observer in the Philip- 
pines " ( 1905) , " On the Way to Hwai Yuen, 
or a Mule Ride in China" (1906), " The 
Classic Mediterranean " (1910), and the 
hymn, " Jesus, Saviour, We Would See 
Thee," collaborator in " The Life of Dwight 



THE START AND THE FINISH 13 



L. Moody," " Christ and the Church " and 
" Proceedings of the Federal Council of the 
Churches." He was never a member of any 
board, committee, association or group of 
workers into which he did not throw his whole 
soul and ability to work. 

One who knew him from his Vernon Cen- 
ter appearance until his disappearance when 
a cloud received him out of our sight will try 
to tell in these pages some of the character- 
istic and romantic incidents of his develop- 
ment. There will be no effort to magnify 
his character or achievements, or to glorify 
his memory, but only to tell the story simply 
and truthfully so that others may get help 
from it. We shall tell about " John " as we 
knew him. 



CHAPTER II 

GETTING RELIGION 

So John Pachman walked into Vernon 
Center that March day of 1873, in his sev- 
enteenth year, his worldly poverty in a small 
bundle in his hand, talent, if not genius, 
seething not understood in his brain, his big 
heart confident and unafraid walking out into 
life with a firm, ambitious tread, his head 
high, his hopes higher, seeking two things — 
religion and education. He felt that the 
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, 
as all wise men have felt even before Solo- 
mon. So he sought religion first, leaving 
education for later consideration; thus, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, taking the first 
necessary step toward sound education. He 
hired himself out to Mr. Young, an elder in 
the Presbyterian Church, as farm hand, with 
a small monthly stipend " and found." This 
was happy for both parties. Mr. Young 
thus entertained an angel unawares. John 
found a warm home, a fine Christian friend 
in the young farmer, a sister's sympathetic 
help in the farmer's lovely wife, and two dear 
little children, girls, upon whom he could 

14 



GETTING RELIGION 15 

practice some of the love and kindness with 
which his heart overflowed. He went to the 
Presbyterian Church with these friends his 
first Sunday in his new home. 

That same week another young man, seven 
years older than John, as tall as John was 
then short, as anemic and thin as John was 
ruddy and stocky, having a few more clothes 
than John and a good many more books, and 
a license from the Presbytery to exercise his 
gifts, and an invitation from the church at the 
Center, had come in on the stage from Oneida, 
lodged lonely in the little manse, and began 
with fear and trembling to try to make ser- 
mons and friends. He made one lifelong 
friend the first Sunday — John. John felt 
in the first two sermons all that the immature 
young seminarian longed to express in them 
and could not. They talked half that Sun- 
day night. " Him that cometh unto me I 
will in no wise cast out no other text was 
needed. John needed no one to lead him to 
the Saviour he was seeking with all his heart, 
only someone to call his attention to that 
Saviour's instant and eternal acceptance of 
him. The young minister declined to discuss 
Presbyterianism or any other ism, because 
our Church welcomes all who trust and love 
and desire to follow the Saviour, and all ques- 
tions beyond that could be postponed; the 



1 6 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

Great Teacher would not fail to teach all 
things in due time, by the Spirit of truth, to 
an earnest disciple and follower. John acted 
upon this truth instantly; it settled the matter 
for him forever; it was never again in his 
life, I believe, open to doubt. That was an 
early prophecy of greatness, that instant de- 
cision of a great question never to be re- 
opened. Is there not some greatness in a 
comparatively untaught soul that can in an 
hour appreciate the incomparable truth of 
Jesus Christ and rely absolutely, with never 
a hesitation, fear or regret, upon His word? 
There was earnest prayer, and hand grips, 
and " good-night " and u God bless you! " 
So John accomplished his first adventure, his 
walking in search of the Holy Grail; he got 
religion. 

And what religion he got ! The following 
Wednesday night the usual mid-week meet- 
ing was held in the little basement room that 
might possibly hold a crowded twenty or 
thirty — but was never called upon to do that 
at prayer meeting; a dozen was a large at- 
tendance. John was there. At the first op- 
portunity he was down upon his knees, trying 
to pray. He mumbled indistinguishable 
words a minute or two and then ceased. 
The embarrassed young preacher knew not 
what to say to him at the close of the meet- 



GETTING RELIGION 17 



ing; could only grasp his hand and try to 
look love and courage into his eyes. An 
answering grip of the hand and the wonder- 
ful eyes spoke gratitude, love and courage 
better than words could have done it. The 
next Wednesday night John was there, and 
at the first opportunity on his knees again 
trying to pray. He w T as there every Wed- 
nesday night, the first to pray. Presently his 
words could be distinguished; simple prayers 
like a child's, but also like a man's, full of in- 
tensest devotion, resolution, fire of purpose, 
with humility, trust, practicality. He never 
failed to be present and to pray, and he never 
failed of a petition for foreign missions. 
Dr. A. W. Halsey, secretary of our Board of 
Foreign Missions, began his article about 
John in The Assembly Herald with these 
words: " The mission cause never had a 
better friend than the editor of The New 
York Observer, whose sudden death on Au- 
gust 26, 1 9 1 1 , brought sorrow to many hearts 
in many lands." It began in that little prayer 
meeting at the Center. It was favorable soil 
for such devotion. The little church had 
sent fully a dozen of its young men to Ham- 
ilton College, only four miles away, over the 
hills, and through Auburn Seminary into the 
ministry, two of them later going to Chile 
as missionaries under our foreign board. 



1 8 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



I have never known anyone between whose 
intellectual convictions and daily conduct there 
was closer connection than was the case with 
John, always. He attended unfailingly 
every church service or other function, in 
every one doing what he could to help. He 
did not attend them for social pleasure, for 
he seldom attended merely social gatherings. 
He was too serious, felt his handicaps too 
keenly, was too intent on getting religion 
and education, to take time for mere pleas- 
ure; and he was too shy in social groups to 
seek them for pleasure. But he felt that as 
a follower of Christ, as a member of the 
church into which he was received and bap- 
tized at the first communion, it was his bus- 
iness to take part in every phase of the 
church's life, and he did it. That spirit 
characterized all his later relations in life. 
He was absolutely faithful and consecrated. 
He accepted no position on board, committee, 
directorate, and no* title or degree, as a mer- 
ited honor, but always as an added responsi- 
bility, an opportunity for earnest service, an- 
other call upon the great love and devotion 
of his heart, brain and hands. His religion 
was not merely the most important thing in 
his character and life; it permeated, colored, 
shaped, glorified every ounce, atom and ion 
of him. It was no fire insurance against 



GETTING RELIGION 19 



eternal damnation, such as when one tries to 
get the largest possible amount of assurance 
against loss and damage by fire for the small- 
est possible premium payments. It was 
union of mind, heart and life with the Lord 
Jesus Christ, blood brotherhood with Him; 
thq past forgiven and the future safe, the 
present full of glorious possibilities of fellow- 
ship, service, growth, gladness, life and life 
more abundantly. Constant companionship 
with such a soul was more educational and 
more heartening to the young parson than all 
his theological years had been. Has anyone 
ever kept close to John for any length of 
time without a similar experience? " There 
was a man sent from God whose name was 
John. The same came for a witness to bear 
witness of the Light, that all men through 
him might believe. . . . He was a 
burning and a shining light, and ye were will- 
ing for a time to rejoice in his light." 



CHAPTER III 



GETTING EDUCATION 

" Getting Education Into Him " would 
have to be the title of this chapter in the life 
of the ordinary boy. When Sidis Boris 
methods become general perhaps boys will 
try to get education instead of requiring that 
it be coaxed, wheedled, argued, scolded and 
pounded into them; but at present the boy 
who sets out for himself to get education is 
extraordinary. He gets it. Hence, how- 
ever it may have seemed to John, it was 
really of slight importance to him that the 
young minister was present to lend a hand in 
the matter: John would have got education 
all the same some other way; but it was of 
immense importance to the young minister 
that the great privilege fell to him. School 
was out of the question; neither of them had 
money for it. Nor was regular recitation 
possible; John's time was his employer's and 
the minister's was everybody's. But the 
small well selected library was there, and 
books were chosen for John to read as he 
could, then to be talked over between them as 
opportunity offered. John read slowly at 

20 



John at the Age of 



GETTING EDUCATION 21 



first, handicapped by inexperience as well as 
by lack of knowledge. But he read dog- 
gedly. He never slept many hours a night, 
but he slept soundly. He did thoroughly 
everything that he undertook. He read 
every spare minute; mornings, noons, nights; 
driving to the nine-mile distant rail- 
road station; many hours on Sundays, and in 
those multitudinous odd times when most 
boys do anything else but read. In discuss- 
ing what he read he soon shook off his first 
embarrassment of poverty of information and 
began to ask questions going down to the 
roots of things and up to their tendencies. 

Autumn brought to the Center a young 
man from a nearby town, gifted with am- 
bition and a little schooling, who had ac- 
quired, by pushing his hair up and back, a 
noble brow, and a manner of oppressive dig- 
nity. He opened in the enlarged basement 
of our church a private school where, at small 
charges, our youth could get education sup- 
posedly better and loftier than the district 
school afforded. John arranged to do chores 
for his employer during the winter for his 
board and put his savings into a few books 
and tuition in the private school. Probably 
fifteen or twenty subjects were taught in the 
school — and John took them. The quality 
of the teaching may be judged from this: 



22 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

The teacher engaged the young minister to 
give him lessons in beginning Latin five days 
a week before breakfast; and it was consider- 
ably later that the minister learned that these 
lessons were given an hour later to pupils in 
the school, and when the minister was absent 
at Presbytery or the like, the Latin class was 
excused that day, of course with no reference 
to the minister's absence. John took every- 
thing except the Latin, which began late in 
the term. He bought with his own money 
candles for study in the night. He attacked 
each subject as if it were the one lion in his 
path of education. What horrors of dis- 
couragement he met in that first climbing of 
the rugged path to knowledge ! But he was 
never discouraged for a moment; difficulty 
meant to him only harder fighting. " Let 
courage rise with danger, and strength to 
strength oppose "; he liked to sing that; he 
lived it daily. He came out of that winter 
a man. All he learned from books and 
teacher was little compared with the educa- 
tion he got from the struggle itself; the really 
vital part of education for life, and the part 
that the ordinary boy never gets at all. 

Three years after John came to the' Center 
the young minister removed from Vernon 
Center to enter a pastorate in New Jersey. 
He had always known from John's prayers 



GETTING EDUCATION 23 



that he wanted to be a foreign missionary, 
but had never spoken of it to John. He 
never tried to force John's confidence on any 
subject, or to give him unasked advice; and 
their growing friendship was thus kept on a 
basis of comradeship; and why use " come 
on " methods with one whom the Spirit of 
God was clearly leading better than a man 
could do it? But now John opened his heart 
on the subject. For once, he was discour- 
aged. He had hoped, but he saw no way 
to get all the vast education his felt igno- 
rance told him he needed, and he spoke of 
missionarying only as of a dream broken, an 
illusion dispelled. The minister, of course, 
could open vistas of hope to him. It was 
arranged that a school should be found where 
John could work his way, wholly or in part, 
until the minister got settled down some- 
where and the minister's wife could invite 
John to become a member of their family. 
In the fall of 1876 accordingly he entered 
Whitestown Academy, a very fine school at 
Utica. Here he worked at gardening, care 
of horse and cow, sweeping out, sawing and 
splitting wood and building fires, and the like, 
at twelve and one-half cents an hour during 
the school year. He had to borrow some 
money on his personal notes, and he found no 
trouble in doing so ; who that ever knew him 



24 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

well could ever entertain a doubt as to either 
his honesty or his ability to repay? But such 
easy money never led him to relax an atom 
of his rigid economy. Money in his pocket 
stayed there, in spite of all the temptations 
that usually evaporate it out of boys' pockets, 
until the sternest necessity brought it out. 

John stood fairly in his classes that year. 
But he had no decent preparation for the 
work; time and strength were poured out for 
twelve and one-half cents an hour to keep 
him along, and he took nearly twice as many 
studies as others attempted. When the sum- 
mer vacation came, John had covered, in a 
term or so of rural district school years be- 
fore, in the winter private school at the Cen- 
ter and the one year at Whitestown Acad- 
emy, and in his solitary reading helped a lit- 
tle by the young minister, the education that 
is usually acquired, with far less thoroughness 
and usefulness, in the eight grades of the 
common school. And he had secured the 
real education which knits character, gives 
it will and strength, endurance and power. 
He was now ready to accept the young min- 
ister's invitation to his home in New Jersey. 



CHAPTER IV 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

While John is taking his brief but mo- 
mentous journey from the country to the 
metropolis, we shall find extraordinary inter- 
est in looking backward over his life to note 
some things which he has recorded. Quo- 
tation marks, unless otherwise indicated, en- 
close his own words. 

He was born in New York City, Septem- 
ber 26, 1856. " About my parentage and 
early life the little I have been able to learn 
is contained in the records of the Home for 
the Friendless. My father, John Devins, 
was Irish Catholic, as was my mother, Ann 
Mahan, before her marriage. My father 
disappeared six months after their marriage 
and had not been heard from since by his wife 
in 1859. My mother was then in service 
at 10 Washington Place, which was then 
the home of Commodore Vanderbilt. About 
a year after my birth, a French woman, 
Mrs. Marie, a widow and a Catholic, 
adopted me. Two years later, in April 
1859, my mother and Mrs. Marie legally 
surrendered me to the Home for the Friend- 
less, parting with me, the record of the Home 

25 



26 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

says, with great affection and many tears. 
After diligent use of every means of search 
I have been unable to learn anything more 
regarding my parents, their connections, or 
Mrs. Marie. Just three months after en- 
tering the Home, I was, on July 26, 1859, 
' dismissed to the parental care ' of Mr. and 
Mrs. Pachman, of Oneida County, New 
York. My memory does not go back of 
that summer morning when I was carried by 
Mr. Pachman, my foster-father, from the 
depot to his home. On receipt of constant 
good reports from the foster parents I was 
legally indentured to them on April 26, 
i860." The foster parents were plain farm- 
ing people in humble circumstances. They 
loved John. The mother was always kind 
to him, the father kind in his rough way in 
the earlier years. 

" I was sent to school before I was five 
years old. I grew tired and devised every 
possible means of running away from school. 
To cure me of the habit, one day when I 
reached home father placed me under a large 
hogshead and sat on it until I promised never 
to play truant again. I remained in my not 
uncomfortable quarters for an hour and after 
due deliberation decided to go to school, and 
from that time gave no further trouble in 
that respect. My education, thus happily 



LOOKING BACKWARD 27 



begun, was doomed by force of circumstances 
to be interrupted." When John once told 
this story someone remarked, " I suppose your 
father sat on the hogshead and read his 
paper." John replied, " No, he could not 
read." The family became poor and poorer. 
The farm was sold and the proceeds quickly 
spent. The farmer became a laborer; his 
temper, manners and language deteriorated. 
Before John was six years old, they intoxi- 
cated him with brandy prescribed for his 
father's illness, and enjoyed the result. This 
set his heart firmly against alcohol and 
against his father's violent ways and lan- 
guage, and against his political party! Be- 
tween his sixth and twelfth years things hap- 
pened that both showed and shaped his re- 
markable character. 

The family were once dispossessed for 
non-payment of rent. John knew the sheriff 
was coming, locked the door and stood be- 
fore it with the key in his pocket. When 
the sheriff came John told him that the 
family needed the house and that if he 
wanted the key to put them out he must get 
it if he could. The sheriff left and the 
family remained. The little lad was early 
put to work and thenceforth contributed 
largely to the support of the family until he 
left home at seventeen years of age. He 



28 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

did chores for neighbors, sometimes for his 
board, that he might attend school in the win- 
ter. He broke colts, worked as a farm hand 
in a lumber yard, in a tannery. For three 
months he worked in a saw mill; the owner 
failed, owing John forty-five dollars and leav- 
ing him in debt for his board. " My entire 
wardrobe one summer for work, church, visit- 
ing, etc., was one straw hat, one jean frock 
and one pair of jean overalls — nothing 
else." He was such a forlorn looking boy 
that some of the older boys kept harassing 
him. He stood it for a long time, then 
seized the biggest bully and held his head 
under the pump and gave him a good drench- 
ing. After that he was highly respected. 

One winter, to get time for school, he rose 
at three o'clock in the morning, ate a scanty 
cold breakfast and did the chores at his own 
home; walked more than a mile to clean a 
neighbor's stable, curry the horses and milk 
the cows ; repeated this for a third family 
farther on, and reached school before nine 
o'clock. Long before that the memory of 
his breakfast had vanished and he was rav- 
enously hungry and ate up his luncheon. At 
noon this sturdy boy, doing the work of three 
men — he did the work of at least five men 
during his manhood years — says he would 
ha.ve starved had not his fellow schoolmates 



LOOKING BACKWARD 29 



given generously of their nuts and apples. 
Evidently he was the John we knew in later 
years and to the end; for anyone who knew 
him well would have been happy to make 
any sacrifice for him if his independence 
would accept it. "I went to the village 
store nights and began to smoke there. " A 
man whom he respected spoke to him about 
it one night. " I threw away the cigar that 
I had lighted and have never wanted one 
since." 

In 1872, being sixteen years old, he told 
his foster-father that he must have an educa- 
tion; that they were well and strong and 
able to support themselves; that he would 
work there one year more and give them all 
that he earned; and after that start out for 
himself. He carried out his program, as 
he always carried out his programs. 

The beginning of John's feeling after God 
and of his religious life are interesting. He 
went to church and Sunday-school when he 
was permitted to do so. " When about four- 
teen years old I learned that the Sabbath 
should be hallowed. I had many scoldings, 
not a few oaths and one terrible whipping 
with a strap because I did not wish to work 
on Sunday." Two years later a schoolmate 
said to him, as they walked home from the 
village store one night, " John, do you know 



3 o JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

that the Bible says that if you believe in 
Jesus and confess Him here, He will confess 
you before the angels when you die? " John 
said that he had never heard of such a thing 
in the Bible. Will replied, " Well, it is 
there, and if you want to enter heaven you 
must confess Christ before you die." John 
instantly decided that he would confess Christ 
when occasion offered. At the meetings dur- 
ing the week of prayer he went forward one 
night for prayer and spoke a few times. 
" But," he says, " I had no religious educa- 
tion except that God was angry with wicked 
boys every day and that a very wicked boy 
was buttoned up in John's jacket — when he 
had one. Of Jesus and His love for me I 
knew absolutely nothing." 

An incident decisive in the formation of 
John's character had occurred a few days be- 
fore this. He was doing chores for his 
board during the winter of 1872-73, and was 
attending a private school with four other 
pupils. Oh New Year's day the family went 
visiting, leaving John and Will at home. 
The boys in a playful scuffle spilled the con- 
tents of an ink bottle on the carpet. They 
made the stain worse by trying to rub it out, 
and had guilty and heavy hearts in the school 
room the next day. The teacher said, 
" John, I would like to see you a moment be- 



LOOKING BACKWARD 31 



fore you go home." His heart sank; but she 
began the interview by asking what he was 
going to make of himself, and in the course 
of the talk urged him to go to college and to 
fit himself for the ministry or some other 
profession to make his life the most valuable 
possible for God and the world. She never 
spoke of the stained carpet. Thenceforth 
John dreamed of college. 

That teacher was a graduate of Mt. Hol- 
yoke, where she was a classmate of the lady 
whom John later married. She became a 
medical missionary in China and Japan, 
Adeline D. H. Kelsey, now living in West- 
dale, New York. She writes in part as fol- 
lows: " A child of ten years, I was looking 
for the little boy who had been brought to 
the next farm from the Home for the 
Friendless in New York. There he sat on 
the gate post, a chubby, sturdy little fellow 
with short, tight curls all over his head. 
The lady who brought John said she never 
felt so badly at leaving a child as she felt at 
leaving John in such surroundings. His fos- 
ter parents were not proper people to have 
the care of an immortal little being. At 
fifteen when I taught him, he was an un- 
couth, unmannerly, and unattractive boy, 
having been brought up in an unmoral home 
with no advantages. He had not sufficient 



32 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



clothing to be clean or comfortable. But his 
whole nature responded to a good thought 
as soon as it was presented. I had a Christ- 
mas tree for my pupils, a most simple af- 
fair. My little nieces, in white and wearing 
evergreen wreaths, distributed the poor little 
gifts. John received a little present. 
Twenty years after that, John told me that 
Christmas eve was to him like a foretaste of 
heaven; he had never dreamed of anything 
so lovely, and his soul responded and ex- 
panded. I next heard from him when I was 
in China, a most astonishing letter that filled 
my heart with humble thanksgiving that I 
had been an instrument to help such a soul. 
He said that whatever success in life he; 
might be able to accomplish he would owe 
to me, under God, for the words spoken after 
the incident of the ink bottle." 

The innate nobility of soul of our dear 
friend showed in his treatment of his foster 
parents. He earned money for them from 
his childhood by the hardest toil. As soon 
as he had anything to spare after leaving 
them, he sent it to them. When his foster- 
father died, John met all the expense of doc- 
tor and undertaker. He supported his fos- 
ter-mother until she married again, and hon- 
ored her by attending her funeral. During 
all my life and experiences with men and 



LOOKING BACKWARD 33 



women of all classes and many races, I have 
never met with one human being that so 
quickly responded to every higher impulse, 
as though his very soul were hungry for 
goodness and righteousness, as our friend 
John B. Devins. 

It was in the spring following the incident 
of the ink bottle, in March, 1873, that John 
left his home and went to Vernon Center. 



CHAPTER V 



THE FIRST DAY IN NEW YORK 

Very early on an October morning in 
1876 I met Mr. Devins at the Erie Railroad 
station in Jersey City. His appearance was 
not attractive to a casual glance. His 
abundant hair, not cut in New York style, 
hung about a sunburned and freckled face. 
His clothes of the cheapest sort were much 
worn and had no fit. He carried in one 
hand an immense old-fashioned enameled 
cloth satchel, worn white at innumerable 
cracks and collapsed, except for a few things 
in the bottom of it; and in the other hand 
the traditional faded green cotton umbrella 
with great bulging whalebone ribs. But to 
anyone who knew him and to discerning eyes 
such as two that looked upon him that after- 
noon, as we shall see, he was a hero and a 
youth moving forward into a great career. 
After breakfast I told him that we could 
spend the day as he pleased and asked him 
where he would like to go. " Central 
Park," he said. He always knew his own 
mind instantly and could speak it in few 
words. After Central Park and lunch, asked 

34 



FIRST DAY IN NEW YORK 35 



where he would spend the afternoon, he re- 
plied instantly, " Home for the Friendless.' ' 
We went in by the Thirtieth Street entrance 
to the home, which extended through from 
Twenty-ninth Street, where the Martha 
Washington Hotel now stands. A young 
lady, sitting at her desk in the reception 
room, came forward to ask what she could 
do for us. Seven years later Mr. Devins 
married her. Hers were immortal eyes; in- 
describable as Mr. Devins', they saw 
through the shabby appearance of the young 
man to the great mind and heart of him. 

She was the widow of the Rev. Thorn- 
ton B. Penfield, who had written on a piece 
of paper when ten years old, " Dr. Scudder 
asked me to be a missionary and to go to 
India and help him, and I intend to," and 
signed his name. He worked his way 
through college, and the young married 
couple went to the Madura mission in south- 
ern India, only seven degrees north of the 
equator. 

There they passed through a cholera epi- 
demic, forty-eight miles from the central sta- 
tion and a doctor. Feeling that this was 
their opportunity to gain the people's confi- 
dence by showing sympathy and readiness to 
aid them, they threw themselves into the 
work. Mr. Penfield had a slight attack of 



36 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

cholera and never recovered from the effects, 
dying one year later. Three hours before 
he died their third child was born, dying 
three months later. Then Mrs. Penfield 
came home with a son of four and a daughter 
of two years. They lived in Montclair with 
her father, Joel Miller Hubbard, who, by 
the way, had effected the purchase, for the 
ladies of the Home for the Friendless, of the 
land on which the Twenty-ninth Street 
building stood. His wife, Mrs. Penfield's 
mother, was one of the corporate members 
of the American Female Guardian Society 
and Home for the Friendless, and had been 
on the executive committee and was corre- 
sponding secretary for years. 

Mrs. S. R. I. Bennett was secretary at the 
time we called and Mrs. Penfield was assist- 
ant secretary. Her parents cared for her 
little ones so that she could go into the city 
for daily service in her office. She already 
knew all about Mr. Devins, for she had writ- 
ten letters to him and about him and was 
deeply interested in him, as anyone must be 
who knew his story. Her first personal let- 
ter to him signed by herself had been writ- 
ten from the Home at Mrs. Bennett's request 
a few weeks before. That letter, which lies 
before me, had brave golden words in it, 
fitted to fill Mr. Devins' heart with even 



FIRST DAY IN NEW YORK 37 



stronger desire to be a missionary, with even 
greater courage and faith for the years be- 
fore him and with a holy admiration for the 
woman who could write it. I had also cor- 
responded with Mrs. Penfield about Mr. 
Devins and had talked with her about him. 
We were therefore like three old friends. 

Mrs. Penfield showed us over the Home. 
I can see Mr. Devins' face to-day as I saw 
it then. As he looked upon the little chil- 
dren studying and playing, and thought how 
he had been one of them seventeen years be- 
fore, the tears rolled down his cheeks un- 
known to him and he walked as in a dream. 
His love for the organization which had 
sheltered him, though only for three months, 
which had suffered him to go and remain in a 
home of poverty and illiteracy, never les- 
sened. He was aware that the extraordi- 
nary care which the Society practices in plac- 
ing its children and always looking after them 
had been singularly thwarted in its pur- 
pose in his case and apparently without any- 
body's fault or intention. He knew that the 
letters from his foster parents which had in- 
duced the Home to send him to them had been 
written for them by humble neighbors, as 
they themselves could not write ; and that the 
statements in those first letters and through- 
out the official correspondence every year, as 



38 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



the Society tried to watch over his welfare, 
had been truthful from the point of view of 
those who wrote them, though greatly mis- 
leading when interpreted from the point of 
view of people in higher social and financial 
position. He understood that it was one of 
those curious cases of unintentional misunder- 
standing depending upon a conjunction of 
circumstances, very likely unique, perhaps 
never to happen again in the history of the 
Society. He, therefore, and rightly, judged 
the Society in its relation to him by its tender 
intentions and faithful watch and care 
through the years, and not by its extraordi- 
nary partial failure to secure for him what it 
supposed it was effecting. 

From this time forward Mr. Devins' re- 
lations to the Society and the Home were 
constant, close and helpful. At the first op- 
portunity to get into New York again he 
called at the Home, and Mrs. Penfield showed 
him all the records regarding himself, in- 
cluding copies of all letters about him. He 
never failed from that time until his death to 
visit the Home often. He loved to look 
upon those little orphans and talk with them. 
His great heart almost burst with tenderness 
for them. He loved to speak about the 
Home and its work to others in private and 
in public. How much he gave to it and how 



FIRST DAY IN NEW YORK 39 



much he secured for it through the years no 
one knows. He was elected a counselor of 
the Society in 1906. Of course, he instantly 
assumed all possible responsibility, as he did 
in every trusteeship, directorate or committee 
membership that came to him, and always 
without assumption of authority. He found 
that a Christian gentleman had offered to 
give toward the Endowment Fund of this in- 
stitution the sum of $20,000, provided 
an equal amount be raised before April 1, 
1909. He would also duplicate, dollar for 
dollar, any sum to the amount of $100,000 
raised before June 1, 1909. After studying 
the situation thoroughly Dr. Devins sug- 
gested to the counselors that they should be- 
come responsible for $1,000 toward the 
$20,000 needed to secure the $20,000 con- 
ditionally offered. The counselors acted 
upon this suggestion. The late Dr. H. B. 
Silliman, immediately on Dr. Devins asking 
him for aid for the purpose, gave him 
$9,000. The remaining amount was soon 
secured, adding $40,000 to the endowment 
of the Home; and in a short time a total of 
$64,502 was raised, which, duplicated by the 
generous offerer, increased the endowment by 
$129,004. 



CHAPTER VI 



LIFE IN ELIZABETH, N. J. 

Mr. Devins' home in Elizabeth was in 
the manse of the Third Presbyterian church. 
The mistress of the manse, who had learned 
to love and admire him and to call him 
" Brother John " in Vernon Center, was de- 
lighted to receive him into the family and to 
help him, as an older sister might, to learn 
such of the conventionalities of society as he 
happened not to know. He never needed 
reproof or admonition. His alert eyes fore- 
stalled his ears in making acquaintance with 
such things. A hint at the most was all that 
was ever required. His love, his devotion, 
his alert thoughtfulness, his courtesy and 
helpfulness enriched the life of the manse. 
The two babies and the passing of one of 
them to the better home influenced deeply his 
mind and heart. He met also in that home 
visitors whom to know was worth while for 
him. Dr. Everard Kempshall and Dr. W. 
C. Roberts, pastors of the First and West- 
minster churches in Elizabeth, Dr. John 
Hall, Dr. A. F. Schauffler, Mr. Edward Kim- 
ball, and many others, were guests there. 

40 



Little Mattie Ray and "Uncle My Don." 

(This picture of Mr. Devins is taken from an old and 
much prized tintype) 



LIFE IN ELIZABETH, N. J. 41 



Mr. and Mrs. George Muller, of England 
and of " The Kingdom of Answered 
Prayer," were entertained there for a week, 
and not a few home and foreign missionaries. 

The Rev. John F. Pingry, D.D., of holy 
and happy memory, received Mr. Devins into 
his notable preparatory school, limited to one 
hundred boys, and made it possible for him 
to earn his tuition and most of his school 
books by janitor and other service; but this 
kindness, great as it was, was not to be com- 
pared with the warm friendship that the 
blessed doctor bestowed upon him. 

Mr. Devins' church relations in Elizabeth 
strongly influenced his character. Had he 
been a member of either the First or Second 
or Westminster church he might have gone 
through his educational course into the minis- 
try in parlor-car style; for those churches had 
wealth in a worldly as well as a heavenly 
sense, and would have admired and helped 
him without limit. The Third Church had 
no worldly wealth, little style and but one 
college graduate in its pews; but it had 
heavenly wealth in extraordinary measure. 
It was a church chiefly of young people be- 
ginning to make their way in the world, and 
making their way toward higher things at a 
rare rate of advance. They were devoted 
students of the Bible, devoted workers in the 



42 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

vineyard of their Lord, and most self-sacri- 
ficing givers to it; that small church carried 
on three missions in different portions of 
Elizabeth. Fellowship in work and worship, 
in thought and prayer, with such a company 
of people, with whose spirit he was in such 
absolute sympathy, was invaluable to him. 
Those people recognized his worth and lov- 
ableness. Almost every organization in the 
church contributed what it could to make his 
home in the manse possible and to meet his 
simple necessities. Words cannot tell how 
it irked him to receive " charity." He 
would a thousand times rather have declined 
any help; but so compelling was the heavenly 
call to foreign mission work that he forced 
himself to bear that cross of " charity " for 
two years longer. Then he threw it off, as 
we shall see later, and at the earliest possible 
moment repaid everybody who had helped 
him with money, an overestimated amount 
with interest up to the date of payment. 

He always attended every church meeting 
of every kind; on Sunday the young men's 
meeting before service, the regular service 
and the Sunday-school, where he soon had a 
class of boys; in the afternoon he taught in 
the Sunday-school of the Third Avenue Mis- 
sion, called upon the parents of his scholars 
and others and attended the evening meet- 



LIFE IN ELIZABETH, N. J. 43 



ing at the mission, in which he at once began 
to speak and then regularly preached until 
he left Elizabeth. Every week he attended 
the church and Third Avenue Mission prayer 
meetings, the teachers' training class and 
everything that was going on in the church. 
Every vacation he worked at Ocean Grove, 
where the family had a summer cottage, one 
summer having charge of the ice business 
there. There he was a universal friend and 
favorite. In the surf he was the strongest 
and kindest of helpers to women and chil- 
dren, giving his attention not only to his 
friends, but to anybody who needed help — 
and among the many thousands who pic-' 
nicked there constantly there were plenty who 
were steadied, or picked up, or helped in or 
or out by his strong arm, or encouraged or 
soothed by his rich voice. He loved es- 
pecially to forget everything else in the world 
in looking after the " kiddies," although they 
were not called by that title at that time. 

He lived on the run. The Commercial 
Advertiser of New York published the fol- 
lowing paragraph in 1901 : " An interesting 
story is told in connection with the bestowal 
by Center College, Kentucky, of the degree 
of doctor of divinity on the Rev. John Ban- 
croft Devins, of The Observer. It seems 
that when Dr. Devins was a schoolboy he 



44 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



used to pass several times a day the house of 
the Rev. Dr. William C. Roberts, now presi- 
dent of Center College. The young student 
always went with a rush. Dr. Roberts, ob- 
serving young Devins daily, finally inquired 
who he was, and remarked : 4 We'll hear 
from that boy one of these days.' The emi- 
nent divine kept his eyes on the diligent lad 
in his after career, and last week had the 
pleasure of conferring the highest honors of 
the college on him." If one cared to 
imagine Mr. Devins' occupations and activi- 
ties in Elizabeth, adding to those already 
listed the studying he did to be prepared to 
enter college with less than two school years 
of actual work, and his constant doing of 
time-taking courtesies and kindnesses for 
everybody, one would not be surprised that 
he broke down. The doctor sent him off in 
midwinter to chop down trees and then to 
chop them up in his old home, and in the 
spring to go into farm work for some months. 
John was impatient through it all. There 
are two kinds of impatience. One is that of 
the little, unreasonable mind; the other, tem- 
peramental, pyschologists tell us, is one of 
the notes of a strong character which feels 
compelled to be doing things and doing them 
now. It required some argument and ap- 
peal to his highest ideals to hold him away 



LIFE IN ELIZABETH, N. J. 4 5 



from books all that time; but he had that 
sublime patience, the patience of an impatient 
man ruling his own spirit, that is great. He 
came back from the woods and farm with 
reinforced vitality that never failed him 
again until near the end. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE UNIVERSITY 

Mr. Devins entered the Freshman class 
of New York University in the fall of 1878, 
going in five or six days a week from Eliza- 
beth. In a few weeks he announced that he 
would henceforth live in New York and 
would accept no more gifts of money from 
us or from anyone. He said he was sure 
that if his Master desired him to be a foreign 
missionary he would help him to work his 
own way and to pay back all that he had so 
far received in charity. He must have had 
very little money in his pocket, but he de- 
clined to accept more. He rented an un- 
furnished room on West Ninth Street, be- 
tween Fifth and Sixth Avenues; and this 
room, his chosen home for some years, is 
worth describing. In the attic of the four- 
story and basement house the only window 
was a small skylight in the center of the flat 
roof, which could be opened and closed by a 
cord hanging down. The room, three or 
four yards square, had rough board walls 
running from the floor to the roof and cov- 
ered with wall paper. Mr. Devins fur- 

46 



THE UNIVERSITY 4 7 



nished it with a cot and bedding, a 
small table, a chair and a lamp, all from a 
second hand store, and his trunk. His only 
outlook from the room was to the stars, to 
which he hitched his wagon. Here I usually 
saw him on Mondays when I went over to 
Ministers' Meeting. He never talked much 
about himself and I never asked many ques- 
tions. On one of the first Mondays he told 
me that he had written to Mr. Whitelaw 
Reid of The Tribune, stating his position 
and his desire to get into newspaper work for 
self-support while going through the uni- 
versity. Mr. Reid replied with a note 
making an appointment at his office. There, 
after a little talk, Mr. Reid introduced him 
to the city editor-in-chief, asking that he be 
given work. He was told to send in local 
news and he would receive at the rate of six 
dollars a column for as much of it as should 
be printed. That was his means of support 
until the next midsummer. He had had a 
trifle of experience in reporting in Elizabeth, 
sending The Elizabeth Journal frequent 
reports of my sermons. He took notes dur- 
ing the preaching and corrected them after 
church by my manuscript of the sermon. 
That was excellent training so far as it went; 
for he resolutely pursued that course instead 
of using the manuscript without previous 



48 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



notes of his own, as most busy young men 
would have done — a strong indication of a 
great personality. He sent The Tribune 
such daily items as he could pick up at the 
university and elsewhere, and some of them 
were printed. He thus earned sixty dollars 
in the first seven or eight months, and he kept 
his expenses within his income. 

A characteristic and decisive event oc- 
curred early in his experience as a reporter. 
One Monday morning he showed me a scrib- 
bled note from his chief, the paper bearing 
also a paragraph clipped from The Tri- 
bune and pasted on. The paragraph re- 
ferred to a new conservatory of music. The 
scribbling said that there was no such con- 
servatory, and that accuracy was expected of 
reporters. I said that was rather rough. 
He replied: " It is rather rough on the ed- 
itor ! There is such a new conservatory. I 
shall interview the president of it after 
classes to-day and have a column about it in 
The Tribune to-morrow morning." He 
found the conservatory in a new handsome 
building uptown, having a corps of 'forty 
professors, one of them being Mr. Theodore 
Thomas. He showed the editor's letter to 
the president and said: " If you will show 
me over the building, give me your printed 
matter and talk to me about the conserva- 



THE UNIVERSITY 49 



tory I will have a column about it in The 
Tribune to-morrow." 

When they returned to the, office the presi- 
dent said: " Shall you really have a column 
about us in The Tribune?" " Yes." 
" Well, that will be worth a great deal to 
us." " I am not doing it for you, but for 
myself; I want to get right with the city 
editor and I want the six dollars." The 
president wrote at his desk a minute and 
handed Mr. Devins an order for anyone 
whose name should be written in by Mr. 
Devins to take the courses of the conserva- 
tory free. He was warmly thanked, the or- 
der was handed back to him, and he was told 
that Mr. Devins expected to support himself 
by reporting for a few years and had de- 
cided that he must accept no gifts from those 
about whom he wrote. Mr. Devins went 
away and the president put on his hat and 
went to see his friend, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, 
to tell him the story. When Mr. Devins 
reached The Tribune office that evening he 
was told that they had given him a regular 
assignment on the staff. 

He made most of his living, such as it was, 
in this way for three years. He borrowed 
on his personal notes from some of those 
well-known New York givers who were ac- 
customed to make such advances to students 



50 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



in whom they believed. He repaid these 
loans a few years later with interest. 
The pleased and commendatory letters of the 
givers acknowledging payments are before 
me. The givers were his staunch friends 
as long as they or he lived. The little- 
schooled, tremendously-overworked young 
student could not wholly satisfy the editor- 
in-chief. Mr. Devins wrote him in the fol- 
lowing April asking an appointment as re- 
porter during the summer vacation. The 
editor's reply lies before me. It is exceed- 
ingly kind with the kindness of a tender par- 
ent who takes his boy and a strap out to the 
woodshed. Their staff is over-full. Even 
if it were not, Mr. Devins could not be en- 
gaged, for his style is crude and rough and 
careless. He has not the qualities for suc- 
cess in journalism — all written with sincere 
regret that it must be so. Mr. Devins in- 
terviewed him at once. He was inexorable, 
said that it was a pity to spoil a good me- 
chanic or farmer to make a poor literary man 
— it was a sheer waste of time. 

Mr. Devins was depressed but not 
daunted. He secured files of The Tri- 
bune and for two months made such a des- 
perately concentrated thorough study of them 
as few other men could have made even if 
they had nothing else to do. Then he wrote 



THE UNIVERSITY 51 



to the city editor-in-chief again, thanking him 
for his affectionate chastisement by which he 
had profited greatly, stating that he had tried 
to improve himself — but not telling of his 
study of The Tribune columns — and 
begging the privilege of reporting the ap- 
proaching commencement exercises of New 
York University. The editor summoned 
him to the office, seemed amazed at his te- 
merity, really taken off his feet. He asked 
him if he had a dress suit. Of course the 
poor fellow had none. But the editor as- 
signed him the Baccalaureate sermon and 
some part in all the other exercises of the 
week, and in a few weeks placed him per- 
manently on the reportorial staff at a salary 
of a thousand dollars a year. 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE " TRIBUNE " 

Mr. Devins rapidly grew in favor with 
The Tribune. Letters from the city editor- 
in-chief, running through the years, show that 
Mr. Devins was increasingly given assign- 
ments of especial importance, delicacy, diffi- 
culty and urgency, and those on which other 
reporters " fell down." At the time of the 
Yorktown centennial celebration, in October, 
1 88 1, the French government sent the Mar- 
quis de Rochambeau, a descendant of Lafay- 
ette, at the head of a notable delegation, 
with suitable retinue, to represent that coun- 
try. The Tribune detailed Mr. Devins to 
go down the bay with a tugboat to welcome 
the delegation; and also to accompany them 
during their stay in this country, reporting 
daily to The Tribune by mail and telegraph. 
The Marquis and his wife became exceed- 
ingly fond of Mr. Devins. They were ap- 
palled that a young man of such extraordi- 
nary gifts and character should have to throw 
so much time and energy into work for food 
and clothes, and they besought him to return 
to Paris with them and live in their family as 

52 



THE " TRIBUNE *' 53 



their son until his education should be fin- 
ished. They were not singular in that kind 
desire. His professors in university and 
theological seminary constantly urged him to 
accept assistance to free him from outside 
work; their expressions in letters now before 
me are exceedingly kind and emphatic. At 
least four distinguished clergymen, Dr. How- 
ard Crosby, Dr. John Hall, Dr. William M. 
Paxton and Dr. Charles S. Robinson, besides 
not a few laymen and women desired him to 
live in their homes and accept their assistance 
until ready for the ministry, but none of these 
things moved him. 

The Tribune sent him as its representa- 
tive to Saratoga in 1883 to report the Gen- 
eral Assembly every day by post and wire. 
Toward the close of the Assembly Dr. How- 
ard Crosby wrote a letter to Mr. White- 
law Reid of The Tribune, thanking him that 
for the first time a newspaper had sent a re- 
porter to an Assembly not in its own city, 
and for the conspicuous fullness, fairness 
and uniform high excellence of the reports. 
Dr. Crosby secured the willing signatures of 
all leading ministers and laymen of the As- 
sembly to this letter. Thenceforth Mr. 
Devins attended and reported every As- 
sembly excepting that of 1909 at Denver, 
twenty-eight in all. He reported them not 



54 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

only for The Tribune, but also for such pa- 
pers as the Pittsburgh Gazette, Washington 
Post, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Record-Her- 
ald, Indianapolis Journal, Baltimore Sun, 
Springfield Republican, Toledo Blade, Cin- 
cinnati Gazette, Louisville Courier- Journal, 
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Omaha Bee, and 
others, as well as for many religious weeklies 
of various denominations. He usually took 
stenographers and typewriters with him and 
employed others locally. I was often awed 
when I watched him at night at the Assem- 
blies, handling easily his masses of carbon 
copies of reports and addresses, the minutes 
of the clerks and his own notes, dictating as 
many as seven different reports for different 
papers at the same time, each giving just the 
sort of news and at the length that paper 
wanted, all admirable. Sometimes he re- 
ported for several papers in the same city — 
three once in Chicago, I remember — no two 
of the reports resembling each other. In his 
many reports for secular and religious papers 
during the long excessive heats of the Briggs 
and Smith controversies, extreme partisans 
of either side accused him of unfairness as 
against their side; but fair-minded men of all 
parties took pains to express to him their 
warm approval of his work. 

When Mr. Devins was regularly placed 



THE " TRIBUNE " 55 



on The Tribune reportorial staff at a salary 
of $1,000, he became a favorite with every- 
body in the office; but he never wasted time 
there. He asked permission to fill in spare 
minutes editing copy, and that he did for 
some time without additional pay. This 
hard-driven theological student by that time 
married, and having two step-children to sup- 
port, apparently could not find enough to do. 
Result; a break-down? Not at all: a going 
up. A vacancy occurring, he was appointed 
night editor, being the only man who had 
fitted himself for the place ; and that position 
he held as long as he remained with Tht 
Tribune. He studied by day and worked at 
The Tribune office at night. He reached 
home from the office between two and three 
o'clock in the morning and slept until ten. 
Then Mrs. Devins awakened him, gave him 
his breakfast and said good-by as he rushed 
up to Union Seminary to study and recite 
there until six o'clock. Mrs. Devins met 
him there and then dined with him at a res- 
taurant, accompanied him to The Tribune 
office — about the only time they had for 
visiting — and went home alone while he 
took up his night work. So the years went 
by. 

During his services as a reporter he was 
assigned to all notable Sunday services and 



56 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

had charge of everything pertaining to ec- 
clesiastical matters, charities and corrections 
and the public parks. For many years he 
filled the weekly column, " What a Pastor 
Sees and Hears," in The Tribune. He also 
wrote innumerable sketches and lives of 
prominent people, either for immediate use 
or for burial in the office " graveyard," 
whence they were resurrected for memo- 
rial or other exigencies. He became ac- 
quainted with practically all people in New 
York best worth knowing; a knowledge of 
great value when he later became editor of 
The Observer. As an incidental and valu- 
able result of his newspaper experience he 
was able to guide his step-son in working his 
passage over the wide and stormy sea of 
university and seminary education. 



CHAPTER IX 



MARRIAGE AND SEMINARY 

As already related in these reminiscences, 
when Mr. Devins called at the Home for the 
Friendless on the first day in New York, he 
was received by the Assistant Secretary, Mrs. 
Charlotte E. Penfield, who, after the death 
of her husband, the Rev. Thornton B. Pen- 
field, at their foreign mission station in In- 
dia, had returned with her two little children 
to the home of her parents in Montclair. 
Whenever he was in New York he called at 
the Home where it was Mrs. Penfield's duty 
to receive him. After he entered New York 
University and went to live in New York 
City, he often dropped in at the Home, usu- 
ally with a bit of news concerning his affairs. 
He attended every public reception and al- 
ways loved an opportunity to see the chil- 
dren and speak to them and with them. If 
Mrs. Penfield was not at hand when he 
called, she was sent for, as the ladies seemed 
to place the responsibility of his entertain- 
ment on her. She soon found how helpful 
he was, always to be relied upon to do what 
was needful. At a meeting of the executive 

57 



58 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

committee a legal question arose and Mrs. 
Penfield was asked to find out about it. She 
asked Mr. Devins, a Harvard law student, a 
full-fledged lawyer, and a business man, and 
said to the chairman of the committee, " You 
mark my words, the replies will come in in 
the order named." And so they did; first 
Mr. Devins' with the desired information, 
full, clear and satisfactory; the others fol- 
lowing later, but none with sufficient informa- 
tion. 

This state of things lasted more than six 
years; she was "Sister" and he was 
" Brother," and " Uncle John " to her chil- 
dren. He visited at her home in Montclair. 
She was the best friend in the world to him 
and the most helpful. Her lucid mind, col- 
lege training, wide travel and reading, for- 
eign missionary experiences, bereavements, 
cares and responsibilities, and her great heart 
and childlike faith like his, united to make 
her the one woman in the world for him. 
Her father died; then her mother. She had 
a critical illness, pneumonia. Mr. Devins 
was full of sympathy, distress, devotion and 
helpfulness. They read their own hearts 
truly then, and each other's. They were mar- 
ried on October 18, 1883. 

Mr. Devins then took up again his inter- 
rupted course in Union Theological Seminary 



MARRIAGE AND SEMINARY 59 



and carried it to completion, meantime acting 
also as night editor on The Tribune staff. 
He was constantly busy with an extraordi- 
nary activity and success. He was restless 
and impatient, not with a nervous fussy habit 
but with intense desire to repay all who had 
ever given him financial help, and to get 
quickly into some mission field. He was con- 
stantly thinking out plans to shorten his 
course at one point or another and constantly, 
after consideration, continuing in the usual 
theological course and doing two or three 
men's work in addition for The Tribune, 
for the Fresh Air Work, and giving a hand 
to help over the stile every lame dog he came 
across. The inexhaustible love of his great 
heart, fed by the love of God within him, a 
well of water springing up into everlasting 
life, flowed abundantly, refreshingly, enrich- 
ingly, to every human heart he touched or 
heard of. He had a terrible time with He- 
brew. He wanted to be excused from it, but 
the Seminary faculty would not excuse him. 
Was he incapable of conquering Hebrew? 
Remember the enormous work he was doing 
outside of the Seminary. When the faculty 
gave their ultimatum, — Hebrew or quit, — 
he took hold of Hebrew with both hands 
and all his heart and in a short time passed 
a successful examination. 



6o JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



Mr. Devins took his theology from Doc- 
tor Howard Crosby, and I doubt if it was 
modified — only filled out — during his sem- 
inary course or in later years. He under- 
stood it and the arguments for it, and stored 
it up in his mind as a standard by which to 
test all theological views that might after- 
wards come to his notice. Remember that 
he had no time as other seminary students 
had to discuss the work of the class-room. I 
doubt if he ever re-opened theological ques- 
tions after that. He sincerely received and 
adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith 
as a summary of scriptural teaching. But 
his actual working creed was very brief. 
He lived by faith in the Son of God who 
loved him and gave Himself for him, that 
giving being constant every moment. He 
became as a little child and saw the king- 
dom of heaven, and entered more wholly into 
it year by year to the last. The time and 
thought and nervous energy that most of us 
ministers give to vexed questions of theology, 
he poured during every waking moment into 
devout Christ-like service to every person 
and every cause that he could help. He 
found in unremitting, self-denying work for 
the poor and the humble, an infinitely higher 
satisfaction than men ever gain from their 
restless wonderings and wanderings in theo- 



MARRIAGE AND SEMINARY 61 

logical fields. He lived a life of prayer. I 
do not know that he ever " agonized in 
prayer/' but the presence, love and goodness 
of God were as simply and naturally real and 
vital to him as were each day's supply of at- 
mosphere, food and opportunity, and each 
night's rest. 

Possibly these facts sufficiently account for 
his tolerance. It began early and increased 
to the last. He judged no one, hated no 
one, opposed no one, on account of theolog- 
ical differences. He applied to preachers the 
only test which his Lord said should be ap- 
plied to them: " By their fruits ye shall 
know them." Where Mr. Devins saw the 
Christ-like spirit and Christ-like labors, he 
ignored creedal differences. He held his 
own theological views with that invincible 
tenacity which was an element of his great- 
ness, but he never made them a test of fel- 
lowship. Service for God and men was his 
test. He did not like theological discussion; 
he saw no use in it. He loved and worked; 
that was sufficient. 

It seemed part of his character that while 
his ethical standards were very high and his 
ethical judgments exceedingly severe, and he 
hated, loathed and abhorred sin and every 
sin, in regarding each individual sinner he 
was the most forgiving, helpful and hopeful 
man I have ever met 



CHAPTER X 



HOPE CHAPEL 

Graduating from Union Theological Sem- 
inary in 1887, several considerations for- 
bade Mr. Devins' going to a foreign mission 
field. Opportunities of service in different 
states were offered him, but his heart drew 
him with irresistible attraction to the region 
where he had been born, to a life-work among 
the teeming multitudes of the lower East 
Side of New York, and there he lived dur- 
ing all but the last year or two of his life. 
He became pastor of Hope Chapel in East 
Fourth Street near Avenue D in December, 
1888. The chapel work was carried on, as 
it had been for many years, by the Fourth 
Avenue Presbyterian Church of which Dr. 
Howard Crosby was pastor and Mr. Devins 
had been a member more than four years. 
What the ministers of New York thought of 
him may be seen in the fact that Dr. R. S. 
MacArthur of Calvary Baptist Church 
preached the sermon, Dr. Henry Van Dyke 
of the Brick Church gave the charge to the 
people and Dr. Crosby gave the charge to 
the pastor. Doctor Crosby's charge began 

62 




Mr. Devins at 32. 



HOPE CHAPEL 63 



with the following paragraph: " It is with 
more than ordinary emotion that I perform 
this duty to-night. I have known you for 
many years; you have struggled against 
heavy odds at times; you have been in posi- 
tions when nothing but a courageous heart 
could have carried you through. You have 
been a faithful man, never afraid of toil, and 
always looking forward to your ministerial 
experience which begins to-night. You have 
not only excited my admiration, but the ten- 
derest emotions of love. Hence it is that I 
take such a high pleasure in welcoming you 
to this pulpit." 

Mr. Devins and his family occupied the 
upper floor of the chapel building, erected for 
the Dry Dock Savings Bank and occupied by 
the bank until it removed to the Bowery, 
when the Fourth Avenue Church purchased 
it for its mission. There was a constant 
stream of callers on business or pleasure bent, 
for a thousand families whom Mr. Devins 
reckoned in his pastorate had many needs for 
help ; and while the rooms were not attract- 
ive, Mr. and Mrs. Devins were, and their 
friends were willing to climb innumerable 
stairs to find them. Mr. Devins' activities 
in the Hope Chapel work and for that vast 
East Side population were extraordinary. A 
mere catalogue of them would be wearisome. 



64 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

It is safe to say that no form or method of 
mission work practiced among such a popula- 
tion was not thoroughly studied by him and 
put into operation if it had been proved suc- 
cessful; and that he originated and brought 
to success not a few additional methods of 
serving such populations. 

Notes for his first report to the Fourth 
Avenue Church after five months of service 
mentioned five hundred pastoral calls; two 
sermons, Sunday-school and prayer meeting 
on Sundays ; week day evening meetings ; cot- 
tage prayer meetings; the Penny Bank with 
over four hundred depositors averaging 
$1.00 each; administration of the Deacon's 
Fund; collection and distributing of clothing 
and furniture; " Blind Jennie's " classes of 
children; sewing school; fresh-air work for 
the children; building up the music fund; 
Christian Endeavor Society, and efforts to 
bring the chapel to self-support. That was 
just a beginning. I shall speak only of some 
of the more remarkable things incident to his 
pastorate. 

In the terrible winter of 1893-4 when the 
out-of-works were innumerable and the suf- 
fering intense, Mr. Devins threw himself 
and was thrown into the work of relief. He 
suggested to the New York Presbytery that 
a committee be appointed to secure funds 



HOPE CHAPEL 65 



sufficient to enable the Presbyterian churches 
of the city to take entire charge of their own 
poor and to give as much as possible to the 
rest of the city's poor. His final report as 
secretary of that committee said that every 
call for aid from every church and mission 
had been met; and that no Presbyterian had 
appealed for aid to any charitable organiza- 
tion. 

The mayor, who had great confidence in 
Mr. Devins, appointed him to administer the 
" Mayor's Fund " for his portion of the city. 
During seventeen weeks, 7,000 men applied 
for work at the chapel and more than 
$40,000 was disbursed to them. None of it 
was given. They earned it. Nobody was 
pauperized. Five hundred different men 
were employed at street sweeping, about one 
hundred and eighteen each day, leaving their 
brooms in the chapel yard at night. Two 
hundred women a week cut out garments in 
a room of the chapel. Many men were em- 
ployed in sanitation work in the tenements, 
kalsomining and whitewashing seven hundred 
houses, including three thousand rooms, eight 
hundred halls, five hundred and fifty cellars 
and two hundred and fifty stables, lofts, 
areas, et cetera, and cleansing and scrubbing 
six hundred and fifty houses, twenty-five hun- 
dred halls, twenty-two hundred rooms. But 



66 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



the filthy cellars, yards and areas had to be 
cleaned out. From those cellars were re- 
moved more than four thousand barrels of 
refuse, one hundred of old bones, fifty-seven 
of leather shoes, et cetera, forty-four of wet 
straw, forty-one of excelsior, fifty-seven of 
old tin and iron, eighteen of broken glass, one 
hundred and fifty of ashes, and great quan- 
tities of dead animals, decomposed rags, gar- 
bage, sauerkraut, meat and milk, mattresses, 
bedding, et cetera. Mr. Devins employed in 
this work only heads of families. Each one 
had his dollar at night. Two of the chapel 
people acted as captains under Mr. Devins' 
generalship and a few of the laborers were 
made lieutenants at $1.25 a day. So shrewd 
was Mr. Devins' choice of lieutenants that in 
handling $40,000 only $2.50 was unac- 
counted for, and one of the lieutenants came 
a few weeks later to return that money say- 
ing that he had stolen it but was sorry. 

Now the men who did the work were not 
street sweepers and garbage men. They 
were clerks and merchants who had received 
good salaries, but from whom the hard times 
had taken their occupation, their little bank 
savings, and one by one their articles of furni- 
ture and clothing until they could not provide 
food for their families. I was visiting Mr. 
Devins at the time and every morning before 



HOPE CHAPEL 67 



light I saw the brooms, shovels, pails, mops, 
distributed to the hundreds of men in the 
streets. Hardly a man had an overcoat or 
rubbers, few had gloves, evidently most of 
them had no underclothing, and the cold wind 
with a mercury far below freezing was very 
bitter. They were not used to such work 
and their muscles and hands were tender. 
There was often blood on their broom 
handles when they brought them back at 
night. Those men might all have secured 
free coal and food from The Tribune, 
free clothing from The Herald, and free 
bread from The World or from the city 
authorities; but they were not paupers and 
they preferred to do that dreadful work 
rather than to receive charity. Their man- 
hood was maintained, their self-respect not 
lowered. 

That was Mr. Devins' idea of helping peo- 
ple — helping them to help themselves when- 
ever that was possible, but giving freely when 
necessity required. The following spring he 
organized the New York Employment So- 
ciety. He had watched, as we all had, the 
failure of the free employment bureaus to 
accomplish the end desired, so he organized 
this on a new principle: everyone who ap- 
plied for work was listed and asked for ref- 
erences, giving his work and his character 



68 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

during recent years. All references were in- 
terviewed or corresponded with. Only men 
whose record for both good work and trust- 
worthy character was satisfactory were rec- 
ommended to employers. Seventy-five hun- 
dred men applied for work at the office of 
the Society during the first year. Many of 
them refused to give references and hotly 
cursed a bureau that would not find them 
work without investigating them. They 
were ready to pay a fee but not to have their 
records known. No fees were asked of any- 
one. Mr. Devins would not ask anyone to 
finance this novel employment bureau until it 
had proved its value; he carried it for a year 
at an expense of about two thousand dollars 
out of his own pocket. 

Was it successful? Mr. Devins saw em- 
ployers, securing the custom of many. For 
instance, Mr. Wanamaker, when opening his 
New York store, took men from the bureau 
as far as possible, as did many others. The 
son-in-law of Peter Cooper, Mr. Edward R. 
Hewitt, who was managing Cooper Union, 
had been for years looking for a practicable 
free labor bureau idea. He watched this 
one a year and then Cooper Union took it 
over, making Mr. Devins a director of the 
Union and Chairman of its Committee on 
Free Employment Bureau. This position he 



HOPE CHAPEL 69 



held many years until improved business con- 
ditions and advance by other charitable agen- 
cies rendered the work of the bureau no 
longer necessary. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE HUNGARIAN WIDOW 1 

While Irma Szedmaky was a school girl 
in Hungary she fell in love with Gustav 
Szabo Erdelyi, a young and handsome fellow 
whom all the girls in the town were after. 
Within a week of their second meeting they 
were engaged. But she was too good for 
such a mesalliance ; her family was noble and 
wealthy, — one uncle a bishop, another the 
first Minister-President of Hungary; she 
must marry a young Count famous in the 
Revolution, and he was more than willing. 
She would not marry where she did not love. 
So she was immured in a convent whose ab- 
bess was a relative. One day a young en- 
gineer smiled at her and she returned the 
smile. They corresponded clandestinely. 
She escaped from the convent and married 
him. He died after fifteen years. Mean- 
time Erdelyi married happily, but lost his 
property and his wife and came to New York 
where, after working two years as a laborer 
and then in the office of a Hungarian news- 
paper, the Amerikai Nemzetor, he became 
its editor and proprietor. When the en- 

70 



THE HUNGARIAN WIDOW 71 



gineer died, Erdelyi began correspondence 
with his former sweetheart who came to New 
York in 1894 and married him. Erdelyi's 
health failed and he died after six months. 
Meantime Mrs. Erdelyi had first helped him 
to run the paper, then took entire charge, 
having a considerable staff under her. 

Erdelyi had been widely known and loved 
among Hungarians, and his funeral near 
Hope Chapel was a wonder. There were 
several Hungarian bands from New York 
and other states, and a concourse of thou- 
sands of his countrymen and countrywomen. 
The hour named for the service passed, but 
no priest appeared. Mrs. Erdelyi asked her 
husband's closest friend and lawyer, a Hun- 
garian Hebrew, to go for the belated priest. 
The priest was away from home. Several 
were visited, the last of whom said that the 
Archbishop, because Erdelyi had been too 
liberal-minded, had forbidden any priest to 
officiate. " Get me a Protestant minister/' 
said the widow. " Whom shall I get?" 
asked the lawyer. " I know none; get any- 
one," Mrs. Erdelyi replied. The lawyer 
knew Mr. Devins and got him. He con- 
ducted a sympathetic service, interpreted by 
the lawyer; for although Mrs. Erdelyi could 
speak five languages, English was not one of 
them. The service concluded, the widow 



72 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

asked that the casket be opened. Then she 
took the crucifix from the dead hands of her 
husband and threw it on the floor. " I re- 
nounce the church that would not bury my 
dear husband," she said; and to Mr. Devins, 
" What is your church?" " The Presbyte- 
rian," he said. " What does ' Presbyterian ' 
mean?" she asked. " Governed by repre- 
sentatives of the members, chosen by them." 
"I like that. What are its doctrines?" 
" The doctrines of John Huss," said Mr. 
Devins — just the perfect words to say to 
her. " I like that," she said. " Can I join 
your church?" An appointment was made 
for Mr. and Mrs. Devins to call on her the 
next day, the lawyer to be present to inter- 
pret. After the brief service at the ceme- 
tery she again asked that the casket be 
opened, knowing that the Catholic under- 
taker had replaced the crucifix in it and again 
she took it out, broke it, threw it down and 
trampled on it, saying, " I knew what I was 
doing at the house. I mean it. I renounce 
the Catholic Church! " 

Mrs. Erdelyi appeared with an interpreter 
before the Chapel session. They were con- 
servative men and Mr. Devins felt a little 
afraid. The examination began: " Madam, 
are you a Christian?" She smiled. " Oh, 
yes, I feel that every person with sense must 



THE HUNGARIAN WIDOW 73 

love Jesus Christ." " Do you pray? " " Oh, 
yes, I could not live without prayer." 
" How often? " " Morning and night and 
many, many times a day I pray little prayers." 
" To whom do you pray? " " Why, to God, 
and Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary, and 
the saints." " Just so, but to whom do you 
like best to pray?" " That seems a sin- 
gular question," she said. " Of course I pray 
to the Virgin and the saints because I was 
taught to ; but when I pray to God and Jesus 
Christ I feel here " — she laid her hand on 
her heart — " that they answer me. Of 
course I like that best. Is it not so with you 
too, gentlemen?" By this time the elders 
were greatly moved and she was duly re- 
ceived. She desired to make a public, and 
thoroughly public, confession. Mr. Devins 
prepared a four-page program, pages eight 
by eleven inches; first page: " Welcome — 
Wilkommen — Isten Hozta;" a picture of 
the chapel, the date, etc. Second page: pro- 
gram, including the most informing gospel 
passages, four hymns, other music, reception, 
addresses, etc., all repeated in German on 
the third page and in Hungarian on the 
fourth. She became a faithful and happy 
member of the Chapel. 

Immediately began a bitter persecution, 
taking many forms. Threatening and ob- 



74 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

scene postal cards were sent her in great 
numbers, scandalous stories about her were 
put in circulation wherever in America Hun- 
garians could be found, and in Hungary. 
The Hungarian government was induced to 
put an interdict on her paper. When she 
went out of town to secure subscriptions, 
trumped-up suits were brought against her 
before Catholic justices and she was mulcted 
in considerable sums, so that presently her 
funds were depleted; and several times her 
life was attempted, once by a brick flung 
through her office window at night, seriously 
injuring her forehead, once with a knife that 
cut her severely. She bore herself sweetly 
and bravely. After she attended a com- 
munion at the Chapel the persecution broke 
out with renewed violence. Mr. Devins 
bought the Amerikai Nemzetor plant of her 
for a dollar; and when in her next absence 
from the city suit was brought against her, he 
attended to it and she lost no more money in 
that way. Then a Hungarian priest came to 
her home and told her that the mother 
church was willing to forget the past and to 
receive her again, and all persecution would 
cease. She indignantly refused to return 
to the Catholic Church. The priest then 
cursed, raved, stormed, threatened; said that 
if she did not return they would destroy her 



THE HUNGARIAN WIDOW 75 



good name, her property and her life. She 
hurried to Mr. Devins and told him. " Did 
anyone hear the priest? " " Yes, my servant 
heard it all." " Very well/' said he, " I will 
stop the persecution." He went to the 
mayor and secured his backing if that should 
be necessary; then to the police inspector in 
his district. He told the story and said, 
" Please tell that priest to stop all persecu- 
tion at once." " Why, Mr. Devins, I should 
like to oblige you, but I am a parishioner of 
that priest; how can I say such a thing to 
him?" "Very well," said Dr. Devins, 
" all he said was heard by a witness. He 
made himself responsible for the persecution. 
I shall put him in state's prison and the mayor 
says he will back me." The inspector saw 
light and went to the priest and the persecu- 
tion ceased at once. 



CHAPTER XII 



HUNGARY 

Mr. Devins tried to secure a Hungarian 
Protestant minister for the service at which 
Mrs. Erdelyi was to confess Christ. None 
could be had. Two in western Pennsylvania 
were too distant. Of forty thousand Hun- 
garians in New York City, five thousand 
were Protestants and had neither church nor 
minister. The few Protestant Hungarian 
ministers in America belonged to other de- 
nominations and were engaged in other 
states. On a showing of these facts, the 
Presbytery of New York appointed a com- 
mittee to act with the Board of Home Mis* 
sions in providing for Hungarian services, 
accepting an offer of Hope Chapel for the 
purpose. Mr. and Mrs. Devins decided to 
take for their summer vacation a trip to Hun- 
gary to accomplish three ends beside the 
recreative one : To find a minister for the 
Hungarian work at the Chapel, and to ar- 
range for future similar supplies as the work 
might extend; to get the interdict against 
Mrs. Erdelyi's paper removed; and to try 
to reconcile Mrs. Erdelyi's relatives and 

76 



HUNGARY 



77 



friends to her Protestant church membership. 
The three ends were gained with some inter- 
esting concomitants. 

The Hungarian Hebrew lawyer who had 
been Mr. Erdelyi's attorney and close friend 
and held the same relations to Mrs. Erdelyi, 
came to Mr. Devins to ask a singular favor: 
" Mr. Devins, will you get a chicken 
slaughter house for us? You can do it and 
nobody else can." He said that every Jew 
was obliged by his religion to use chicken 
once a week as part of a meal, and it must 
be " Kosher," killed by a priest according to 
the ritual. But it was illegal in New York 
to kill a chicken excepting at an authorized 
slaughter house. The only one was far 
down town, and was practically inaccessible 
for the poor Jews who could afford neither 
car-fares nor hours to go there every week. 
The statutes forbade killing a fowl in a tene- 
ment, or even carrying a live fowl into a 
tenement; yet so great was the faithfulness of 
the poor people to their religious require- 
ments that many simply had to smuggle live 
fowls into their tenements, where the priests, 
risking fine and imprisonment, killed them in 
Kosher manner. Now the Hebrews had 
long before bought a suitable piece of ground 
not far from Hope Chapel, had money in 
bank to build the slaughter house, had plans 



78 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



complying with all civic requirements, and 
had often begged the Common Council to 
grant permission to build. They could get 
no action, could not get the Council inter- 
ested. " Mr. Devins, you are the one man 
who can put this thing through for us. 
Will you do it?" He would try; and he 
succeeded and soon the slaughter house was 
built. 

When it became known that Mr. and Mrs. 
Devins were going to Hungary on their er- 
rands of good will, the lawyer, and hosts of 
other Hungarians and Jews, gave them let- 
ters of introduction to influential Europeans 
and showed them a hundred kindnesses. It 
was Mr. Devins' first trip to Europe, but I 
could never get him to discuss the trip ex- 
cepting as it affected his special purposes. 
At Budapest he established Mrs. Devins 
at a hotel and called immediately at the of- 
fice of the Secretary of State, or whatever 
he is called there. The Secretary was out of 
the city, and Mr. Devins sent in his card to 
the next in authority. A cold and haughty 
gentleman appeared to ask his wishes. Mr. 
Devins presented a letter of introduction and 
said that he wished to get the interdict re- 
moved from the Amerikai Nemzetor. 
" How long would he be in Budapest?" 
" A day or two." " Oh, nothing could be 



HUNGARY 



79 



done. It would take weeks, perhaps months, 
and probably it could not be accomplished at 
all." Then the gentleman looked at Mr. 
Devins' card more attentively, lifted an 
amazed face, put out a glad hand and cried, 
11 Are you the man that had the funeral? I 
am proud to shake hands with the man who 
was brave enough to conduct that funeral 
when all others refused." He overflowed 
with enthusiastic cordiality. He was a 
Catholic, he said, but not that kind of a 
Catholic who did not admire the Erdelyis 
and Mr. Devins. He would see what could 
be done about the interdict. He regretted 
that the absence of his wife from the city 
forbade his asking Mr. and Mrs. Devins to 
be his guests. " Please dine with us at our 
hotel to-night," Mr. Devins said. He ac- 
cepted instantly, again with enthusiasm. 
Long before dinner hour he rushed in upon 
them holding his hat high in air, almost danc- 
ing with excitement, happy as a boy, waving 
an official document and crying out, " I have 
it! I have it! " He had secured the removal 
of the interdict. The efforts to secure a 
Hungarian Protestant minister and to recon- 
cile Mrs. Erdelyi's friends to her attitude 
were equally successful. 

Not long after Mr. and Mrs. Devins re- 
turned from Hungary I read one morning in 



80 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

my Chicago paper a three-quarter column 
Associated Press dispatch from New York, 
stating that the people of the East Side had 
presented to the mayor a monster petition, 
signed by many thousands of every race and 
religion and of no religion, begging him to 
appoint Mr. Devins a member of the Board 
of Education about to be formed under the 
new city charter. The mayor, said the dis- 
patch, replied that he knew Mr. Devins very 
well and esteemed him as highly as any man 
he knew, but he would never put a clergyman 
on the Board of Education, for all clergymen 
were cranks in such positions. However, 
such was his absolute confidence in Mr. Dev- 
ins, that if he would name to the mayor a 
suitable man on the East Side for the posi- 
tion, that man should be appointed. Mr. 
Devins' first knowledge of the whole matter 
came to him as he read his morning Tri- 
bune at breakfast that day. He went at 
once to the mayor's office, laid The Tri- 
bune before him and asked if the article 
were entirely correct. The mayor said that 
it was. " Then," said Mr. Devins, laying a 
slip of paper before the mayor, " here is the 
man who should be appointed." " I do now 
appoint him," said the mayor. 



CHAPTER XIII 



FEDERATION 

" There is no better authority on work on 
the East Side of New York than the 
Rev. John B. Devins, the tireless pastor of 
Hope Chapel/' said an editorial in The 
Outlook of January 23, 1897. " Mr. 
Devins is more than simply a mission worker; 
he is an intelligent and earnest student of the 
life of the East Side, and has done as much 
if not more than anyone else to perfect The 
Federation of East Side Workers," and it 
gives a long account of the organization. 

In all his work for the people of his par- 
ish, and especially in the sorrowful times of 
the winter of 1893-4 when Mr. Devins was 
giving about seventeen hours a day to relief 
work alone in addition to his ordinary Chapel 
duties, he felt increasingly the need of some 
cooperative organized work in behalf of the 
poor, and especially of organized coopera- 
tive effort to prevent poverty by giving infor- 
mation to the ignorant and timely aid to self- 
help for those who were tending to poverty 
but might be saved to self-support. It is 
probable that from the point of view of the 

81 



82 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



future historian of social movements in New 
York City the organization and development 
of The Federation of East Side Workers will 
be regarded as Mr. Devins' most original, 
distinguished, statesmanlike and fruitful work 
in the world. It was original in conception, 
boldly innovating in theory, requiring almost 
superhuman courage to attempt it and long, 
patient, tactful, undiscouraged labor, with un- 
surpassed diplomacy in handling the antago- 
nistic elements whose fusion was essential for 
its success. In Mr. Devins' words : " It is not 
an effort to bring about church union, though 
Protestants, Romanists and Hebrews coop- 
perate. It is not an organization to give one 
benevolent society an advantage over an- 
other. It is not a relief-giving society. It 
is not a rival of any existing agencies. It is 
an honest effort on the part of those living 
or working in the district to cooperate along 
lines upon which there is a general agree- 
ment. It is an earnest effort to bring into 
active cooperation all of the pastors, regard- 
less of creed, and representatives of all chari- 
table societies, whatever their object." 

And he succeeded in making that vision, 
that dream, that apparently impossible Uto- 
pian project a success at the start and year 
after year! No one else could have done it. 
He had been in Hope Chapel only six or 



FEDERATION 83 



seven years; he was very young; he had no 
previous experience in such work; there was 
nowhere in the world a model for him to imi- 
tate. How dared he try to weld official 
representatives of all churches and syna- 
gogues below Fourteenth Street, between 
Broadway and the East River, and of all 
charitable organizations there of every sort, 
into a compact, cooperating, friendly, ef- 
ficient organization? It was a stupendous 
dream — and the realization actually fell 
nothing short of the vision. He dreamed 
practically. Every line in his dream-plans 
was drawn only when he was certain that it 
was practicable. When the vision was com- 
plete as a pictured ideal, each item as care- 
fully and scientifically worked out as the lines 
and figures in an architect's blue-print, he 
went to work to realize it in practice. Dog- 
gedly, persistently, without haste and without 
rest, he worked, adding to all his other du- 
ties and ventures this amazing dream. A 
thousand partial failures never troubled him 
more than a few minutes; " Up and at 
them " was his working motto. He felt his 
hand in God's. It was not his work at all; 
it was God's work, and it was God's work for 
the countless needy children around him. 
Few believed that he could succeed. It 
seemed chimerical — but not to him. And 



84 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

he did it. Try to visualize what he did. 
Think of his actually overcoming all ob- 
stacles, surmounting all prejudices, arguing 
away all objections made by practically every- 
body he approached. Get Protestants, 
Romanists, Hebrews, charitable societies of 
every name and sort, lodges, clubs, anarch- 
ists, everybody, to work in official coopera- 
tion! Believe it possible who could! 

Upon what did he rely for success? Not 
upon miraculous divine aid; not — modest 
man that he was — on his own powers ; but 
he reckoned upon that human sense and sym- 
pathy with need which he believed to be in 
everyone engaged in East Side helpful work, 
ready to respond to a reasonable stimulus. 
He showed them all — parsons, priests, rab- 
bis, philanthropists, and just simple human 
helpers of others — that it could be done and 
would pay for the doing; and they did it. 
Thus for the first time in human history such 
cooperative effort on a noble scale was organ- 
ized, successful, practical. It taught the 
world a needed lesson which it is slowly 
learning. When the Lower East Side, hav- 
ing one-tenth of the city's area and at that 
time one-fourth of its population, a half-mil- 
lion souls, learned by doing it, that coopera- 
tion in charitable and preventive work was 
practicable, delightful, efficient, the world 



FEDERATION 85 



waked up. The Outlook article quoted at 
the beginning of this paper concluded with 
these words: " The Federation of East Side 
Workers ought to be extended to take in the 
whole city, or rather there should be other 
federations which should cooperate and so 
cover the whole city. Organizations cannot 
do everything but proper organization in- 
creases power." 

The details of the organization and its 
methods of work cannot be adequately sug- 
gested here, or the practical results of it for 
the East Side. But two practical results of 
far-reaching importance must be noted. 
First came the larger federation of Christian 
forces in New York City which has now these 
many years produced incomparable fruitage; 
then came the Federal Council of the 
Churches of Christ in America, the coopera- 
tive work of thirty-three of the leading de- 
nominations of the country. Not only did 
Dr. Devins have important and distinguished 
offices in connection with the Inter-Church 
Conference on Federation in 1905 which re- 
sulted in the organization of the Federal 
Council, and equally responsible and taxing 
positions under the Council up to the time of 
his death, but three of the leading speakers 
on the platform of the Inter-Church Confer- 
ence ascribed to Dr. Devins the high honor 



U JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

and distinguished merit of having done the 
pioneer work which both blazed the trail 
and cleared the path into the heart of the 
wilderness of denominational rivalry, inter- 
ference, confusion and hindrance in Chris- 
tian work, and thus prepared for the glorious 
Federation which now puts heart and hope 
into everyone who longs for the doing of 
our Father's will on earth as it is done in 
heaven. This notable service of Dr. Devins 
to the kingdom of God is fully recognized in 
the tribute to his memory, unanimously 
adopted by the Executive Committee of the 
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
America, at a meeting held on November 8, 
191 1, and placed upon its minutes. 



CHAPTER XIV 



PERSONAL WORK 

" Who are you?" said Mayor Gaynor a 
few months ago addressing, by invitation, 
the Congregational clergymen of New York 
City. " Who are you? How far does 
your influence extend? Do you reach out 
among the people ? Who are you ? Do you 
reach out among the unfortunate and the 
lowly and those that want to be lifted up? 
Who are you? Does the great heart of 
Jesus throb in you — the One who took all 
the lowly by the hand and said, ' Come unto 
Me and I will help you ' ? " When I read 
those fine words I answered at once: John 
Bancroft Devins ! How inevitably, when we 
read of this minister's eloquent sermons, of 
that one's growing congregations and budg- 
ets, and of the other one's new church edi- 
fice, we feel that all these may possibly mean 
chiefly ability and ambition; and we want to 
ask, if we do not know him personally, " Who 
are you? What is your heart? Do 
you reach out, and down? How far does 
your influence reach downward? The heart 
of Jesus — is it yours ? " 

87 



88 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

Mr. Devins' habit of personal work began 
when he was a boy and lasted through life. 
While a student in the university he saw in 
the Grand Central Station, a man evidently 
much distressed, and asked if he could be of 
assistance to him; his habit of offering help, 
not waiting to be asked, was a notable char- 
acteristic. The man had just landed from 
Europe, planning to settle in the West, bring- 
ing his gun and dogs with him. Unexpected 
revenue duties collected on these, and other 
unexpected expenses, had consumed the 
money he had intended to use for travel 
westward, and he was stranded, friendless. 
Mr. Devins gave him what he had with him, 
enough to take him to his destination. Some 
years later came a happy letter from the man, 
enclosing the loan and heavy interest and 
expressions of gratitude. 

He was always eager for personal touch 
with the particularly needy. His heart 
ached for each one, opened wide to each one; 
his time, money, love, prayers, sympathy, 
help of every imaginable sort belonged to 
each one. It never occurred to him to ask 
if people were " worthy," " deserving," any 
more than Christ asks that about us; the only 
question was, " Can I be of use to them? " 
Literally hundreds of illustrative incidents 
occur to me, from which I select typical ones. 



PERSONAL WORK 89 



There was nothing formal, perfunctory, pro- 
fessional, about his Hope Chapel work; it 
was every bit personal work. 

The sky-apartments over the Chapel were 
consecrated to personal work. His idea of 
a home, which never changed, was written to 
Mrs. Devins some years later: " While we 
cannot make a home for the Master in vis- 
ible form as the Bethany sisters did, let us 
see to it that we shall here display that spirit 
which will make Him the unseen guest with 
those whom in His name we shall receive 
here." We used to feel sorry for Mrs. 
Devins when, so often, the domestics were 
apparently selected because they needed 
friendly help rather than for help they were 
competent to render; but Mrs. Devins did 
not seem sorry for herself. Delicate in 
health, often suffering, apparently with little 
strength, she devoted herself absolutely; and 
she accomplished wonders to make most 
healthy Christian women feel very small. 
She was the helpmeet for him. The boys' 
club, aimed to keep " the gang" off the 
streets evenings, had a room in the Chapel 
with books, games, entertainments; but the 
toughest ones — " Pepper " and " Lemons " 
and " Buttons " and " Job Lots " and so on 
— were turned over to Mrs. Devins to be 
entertained in her parlor with games and 



90 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

the like, and special ones were permitted to 
sit by her at prayer meetings. Mr. Devins' 
influence with them was great. For years 
afterward, when one of them got into trouble, 
" the gang " would come for Mr. Devins and 
he would appear in court, become sponsor for 
good behavior, pay fines, get them reinstated 
in their own respect. 

Every child in Sunday-school had its turn 
at good times in that parlor. A few classes 
at a time were given a happy evening with 
games, refreshments, friendship; and for 
years afterwards those " parties " were 
heard of reminiscently and gratefully. A 
Bible class of twenty or thirty old ladies had 
their annual parties in the parlor, and every 
summer Mr. Devins took them — where do 
you suppose? to Coney Island! I remember 
vividly the first time he gave those dear eld- 
erly women the time of their lives. They 
saw everything, and rode seraphically on the 
merry-go-round, and played in the sand, and 
had delicious ice cream and lemonade with 
their lunches, and got home crying with 
weariness and perfect bliss. Who but one 
who had loved himself clear into their worn 
old hearts could have imagined the one per- 
fect outing for them? He gave the choir 
treats; took them to an oratorio, " The Mes- 
siah," at Carnegie Hall, and the like. 



PERSONAL WORK 91 

He guarded his flock as the Good Shep- 
herd does His. When he took the trip in 
1895 to England, France, Hungary, he en- 
tered a protest, before going, against any 
saloon license being granted in his district 
until he should return. When he got home 
there were a lot waiting to open up. He ob- 
N jected and backed up the objection with un- 
answerable arguments, and no licenses were 
granted. Day after day the would-be 
saloon keepers came to beg him to let them 
have licenses. He would talk long and 
friendly with them and go with them to the 
authorities with his map, and show the num- 
ber and locations of too many saloons already 
in the district. Of course his life was 
threatened. That did not trouble him. His 
friends begged him not to go out nights alone 
or without a heavy cane; but he could not 
wait for guards or remember the cane. 
When one saloon keeper had threatened his 
life, he went at once and had a friendly talk 
with him. And, of course, the saloon 
keepers, being human, liked him and con- 
stantly came to him for help when they got 
into trouble. 

He had everything possible to help his 
people; Christian Endeavor, Chautauqua 
Circle, gymnasium, always something new. 
But note this : he never got tired of the old 



92 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

methods if they did good. He had no rage 
for novelty; he was looking about and ex- 
perimenting to find the best things. He sent 
large groups of girls to Northfield and 
similar places every summer, some paying 
their own way wholly or in part, he paying 
what was lacking. He went with them. A 
photograph lies before me, the first group, 
forty, I think, that went to Northfield, Mr. 
Devins and his two loyal helpers, Mrs. 
Devins and his step-son, Thornton Penfield, 
in the front row. There were girls who had 
never been out of New York City before, 
and all of them were hard-working girls. 
What a glorious thing to do for them, how 
enlarging and renovating to life and char- 
acter! It should be noted that in all this 
work Mr. Devins was struggling against 
fearful comparative odds. The elders of 
the Fourth Avenue Church who were re- 
sponsible for the conduct of the Hope Chapel 
work were salt of the earth; salt is con- 
serving — and they were thoroughly con- 
servative ! They had no confidence in mod- 
ern methods of conducting city missions; 
two preachings and Sunday-school, and mid- 
week prayer meeting, and a summer picnic, 
and constant help to the poor, with extra 
gifts all around at Christmas — that was 
their program. Anything else was looked at 



PERSONAL WORK 93 

askance. They would not appropriate funds 
for other purposes. So Mr. Devins did extra 
work on The Tribune nights, and reported 
General Assemblies and the like to earn 
money for the Chapel work. He lived in 
the simplest manner possible, at the least 
expense. He put more cash into the Chapel 
year by year than he received in salary as 
its pastor. It is easy to account for five thou- 
sand dollars and more of remembered ex- 
penditures of the kind, and nobody knows 
how much is not remembered. 

Some good people ask, as cases present 
themselves, " How much must I give? How 
much must I do? What does the Lord re- 
quire of me? What will be expected? 
What is my share? What is the least that 
will satisfy my conscience? " They do good, 
and get good in doing it, and very likely at 
the same time get an enormous amount of 
conceited satisfaction. I believe that Mr. 
Devins never asked one of those questions. 
For according to his power, I bear witness, 
yes and beyond his power, he gave of his own 
accord, beseeching everybody with much en- 
treaty to accept his grace and fellowship in 
so ministering; and this, not as some are 
proud to do, but first gave his own self to the 
Lord, and to everybody through the will of 
God. " What can I do for you? " was his 



94 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

constant question; and if you had no answer 
ready, he would suggest one ! He never 
" went out of his way " to do anyone good; 
for his way always was His way whom he 
loved and served in serving His children, 
the way of Him " Who went about doing 
good." And he was very, very happy. 




Dr. Devins at 44. 



CHAPTER XV 

MORE PERSONAL WORK 

The variety of Mr. Devins' personal 
work, its extent, some of its characteristics 
and some of its successes, should be more 
fully illustrated. In a long, wide and more 
or less intimate acquaintance with great men 
of affairs in the Presbyterian Church I have 
not met one, unless possibly Dr. John Hall, 
whose mind, heart and efforts embraced so 
many, so different, so taxing, so time-taking 
persons, causes, movements. I am quite sure 
of the literal truth of this statement; that he 
never neglected, slighted or failed in deep 
sympathy and constant effort regarding any 
one of them. No wonder Mr. Whitelaw 
Reid said of him that The Tribune had no 
more faithful, dependable and efficient as- 
sistant; and The Tribune was never more 
than a side-line, though a most useful one, to 
Mr. Devins' life work. 

Mr. Devins was one of the earliest, busiest 
and most popular of the Public Lecture Corps 
of the Board of Education of the City of 
New York. I attended some of his lectures 
with him. They were given in public schools 

95 



9 6 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



all over the city, evenings, and were freely 
open to pupils and their parents and friends. 
He had lectures on a wide variety of topics, 
which he was constantly giving also in 
churches and elsewhere as they were called 
for. He threw his soul into each one, and 
got into the souls of his audience. Stereop- 
ticon slides, anecdotes, wit, pathos, all helped; 
but chiefest was his soul moving those souls 
before him. It was a thrilling thing to 
watch. The people crowded about him 
afterward, to take his hand, to hear his voice, 
to tell him their souls, to get next to his soul 
— and everyone of them did it. His soul 
was open to every human being. He never, 
I think, pretended deep interest in anyone, be- 
cause he did not have to; he had the interest. 
I do not know that he ever said Nihil hu- 
manum a me suto, but he lived it. 

Dr. Charles S. Stoddard wrote his " Au- 
gustus " letter for The Observer of March 
19, 1896, on "A Personally Conducted 
Tour." That was long before Mr. Devins 
became connected with The Observer. The 
article tells how Mr. Devins, " who is rap- 
idly developing into a first-class practical 
philanthropist " led a party of members 
of the Housing Conference in New York, to 
see things on the East Side, Dr. Stoddard ac- 
companying them by special invitation. Mr. 



MORE PERSONAL WORK 97 



Devins led hosts of such parties; sometimes 
a few personal friends, sometimes a professor 
from Yale or some other college, and his class 
in sociology, sometimes distinguished for- 
eigners of world-wide renown in philanthropy 
or reform. The things to see and to hear 
about were absorbingly interesting, but I al- 
ways noticed that the personally conducted 
people were as interested in the personality 
of the conductor as in the things he showed 
or told them. He was so deeply moved him- 
self by the things he saw every day, so tender 
for the poor and ignorant, so fierce in his 
rages against injustice, against rich selfish- 
ness, flushing deeply, clenching his fists, 
breaking off his sentences; it was all personal 
to him. 

A note of the wideness of his sympathies 
appears in the article he wrote for The 
Christian at Work years ago about the 
" Sisterhood of Personal Service/' a work 
of Hebrew ladies much like that of the King's 
Daughters. It was purposed to give here a 
list of causes that he personally worked for, 
but the number is so incredibly large that it 
cannot be done. Four or five striking illus- 
trations of his personal work with individuals 
are worth more. 

In an article entitled " Merry Christmas in 
the Tenements," in the December Century of 



98 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



1898, Mr. Jacob A. Riis tells of a call on Mr. 
Devins at Hope Chapel. " Of the kind of 
problems that beset its pastor," he says, " I 
caught a glimpse the other day when as I 
entered his room, a rough looking man went 
out. i One of my cares,' said Mr. Devins, 
looking after him with contracted brow. 
4 He has spent two Christmas days of twenty- 
three out of jail. He is a burglar, or was. 
His daughter has brought him around. She 
is a seamstress. For three months, now, she 
has been keeping him and the home, working 
nights. If I could only get him a job ! He 
won't stay honest long without it; but who 
wants a burglar for a watchman? ' " Mr. Dev- 
ins had always scores of such people on his 
hands and heart. His patience and courtesy 
with such people, with all people, were un- 
failing. A former gifted minister who had 
fallen far down and was still young came to 
me several times for help. Every time it 
cost me a night of grief because I could not, 
somehow, get near him or be of any real help. 
But he went down to Dr. Devins' office and 
straightway began a steady upward course 
that has made him one of the best and most 
useful men in America. 

He found a man with a large family of 
small children, out of work, discouraged. 
He had been promised a position on the 



MORE PERSONAL WORK 99 



police force, but was rejected because his 
teeth were poor. He was too poor to have 
them repaired. Mr. Devins sent the man to 
his own dentist and paid the bill. The over- 
joyed man went to his examination, but was 
rejected because he was slightly under height ! 
" Have you not been tramping about consid- 
erably? " "Yes, all day." "This is Fri- 
day. Go home and rest over Sunday and 
come again." He did so and on Monday 
measured an inch above the required mark 
and received his appointment. He duly re- 
paid Mr. Devins the amount of the dentist 
bill and was an honored member of the force. 

An anarchist on the East Side, a close 
friend of Johann Most, had a young daugh- 
ter who was a cigar maker and also kept 
the motherless home. She attended Hope 
Chapel Sunday-school. Her father swore 
that he would throw her out of the house if 
she united with the church. She did and he 
did as he promised. Mrs. Devins took her 
into that plain little heaven up over the 
Chapel. She was aided to go to Northfield 
and to the Moody Institute in Chicago to 
study to become a missionary. She worked 
among the freedmen and was about to go as 
a missionary to Africa when tuberculosis 
seized her. Again she was received into that 
Christlike home. At the cemetery after the 



ioo JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

funeral, her father said to Mr. Devins: 
" Whatever you tell me to do, I will do." 
He gave up a saloon which he had secured 
by marrying its proprietor; he kept his word, 
fully. 

A letter came recently to Mrs. Devins from 
a stranger, saying in part: u Dr. Devins is ac- 
countable for the fact that I am a useful citi- 
zen. He put out the hand of understanding 
fellowship when I sorely needed it. He 
counseled me and encouraged me aright when 
everything looked black. He was sui gen- 
eris, a kind represented only by himself, and 
if I may be so bold, I will say he was the best 
man I ever came in contact with. His soul 
was kindly, and despite the fact that he car- 
ried on his broad shoulders and in his great 
heart a load of responsibility that would have 
staggered anybody else, he had always time 
to cheer a fellow when he needed it. 
I am not a professing Christian, but if there 
is any power that could convert me it would 
be the wonderful example of Dr. Devins and 
his practical methods of working." To this 
correspondent, who is the son of a former 
great man and United States Senator, Mrs. 
Devins at once directed a friend who lived 
near him. The friend called, explained to 
him the way of life; and he accepted the 
Saviour and purposed to take up as far as 



MORE PERSONAL WORK 101 



possible the work of helping " the other fel- 
low " and so perpetuate the influence of Dr. 
Devins. This was within a week after Dr. 
Devins' death. 

The Rev. Charles Stelzle, whose name and 
fame and power are in all the world, was a 
member of Hope Chapel while he was a 
young workingman, and became Dr. Devins' 
successor in the pastorate of the Chapel. He 
said in part at the funeral services: " I am 
very glad on this occasion to speak of my 
personal appreciation of what Dr. Devins 
meant to me. When Dr. Devins came to 
Hope Chapel I was a young fellow just about 
entering a machine shop on the East Side of 
New York City, not having many opportuni- 
ties of education and some other things which 
I have since enjoyed. I recall all that Dr. 
Devins meant to me, say at the age of fifteen 
and sixteen to twenty-one. You know what 
a friend means to a fellow of that sort — 
Dr. Devins was that kind. I was not afraid 
to come to him with anything; he knew more 
of the secrets of my life than any man in this 
world. I told him freely because he was a 
friend, because of that sympathy which was 
so manifest in every relationship of life. In 
spite of that strong frame of his, he was ten- 
der as a child; he sympathized most lovingly, 
for he himself had passed through those 



io2 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

afflictions — he was kin to all men. I re- 
member well how as a boy he led me, through 
the Christian Endeavor Society, the Sunday- 
school and through the organization of Hope 
Chapel. When I felt I must study for the 
ministry, even though I was a member of 
another church at that time in another city, 
I went to Dr. Devins and told him that I 
wanted to study for the ministry. It was Dr. 
Devins who helped me to enter the Moody 
School in Chicago, and I recall also that Dr. 
Devins loaned me the fare to go to Chicago 
to begin my work of preparation for the Gos- 
pel ministry when so few other people 
thought I would ever amount to anything in 
the work of Jesus Christ; it was Dr. Devins 
that helped me and pushed me forward and 
encouraged me to go on in the way I felt 
God had called me." 

Mr. Stelzle is probably the most illustrious, 
on earth, of the fruitage of Dr. Devins' per- 
sonal work. But what a record of it all there 
is above! Dr. Devins lived poor and died 
poor. Is he one of the richest up there ? 



CHAPTER XVI 



THE FINISH AND THE NEW START 

" John Bancroft Devins — that is a name 
honored in Presbyterianism as but few 
names are honored, honored throughout the 
Christian church and honored in all circles 
of life where he is known. " So Dr. John F. 
Carson, Moderator of the General Assembly 
of the Presbyterian Church, began his notable 
address at Dr. Devins' funeral in Dr. Car- 
son's own church in Brooklyn. No attempt 
can be made to quote the other notable things 
said and written about Dr. Devins since his 
death as well as before it. They would 
easily occupy a volume. No attempt can be 
made to relate and estimate his years of work 
on The Observer; his trip around the world 
and his later Mediterranean trip; the observ- 
ant, scholarly, popular books he wrote about 
the two trips; the constant widening of his 
sympathies with many kinds of philanthropic 
effort, his official relations to organizations 
seeking their promotion, his constantly aug- 
menting burdens of responsibility and ex- 
penditure of time, money, strength, in con- 
nection with them; his helpful relations to in- 

103 



io 4 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

dividuals, organizations, movements, causes 
in the Presbyterian Church, in many other 
denominations, unconnected with denomina- 
tions; his constant correspondence and con- 
ferences with leaders in the world's work for 
the unevangelized, the poor, the oppressed, 
the ignorant, the unfortunate in many lands; 
his never failing faithfulness to his family 
circle, to his friends, to his former parish- 
ioners on the East Side, to an ever widening 
circle. The study of these things, item by 
item, and classified and massed, leaves me 
bewildered and marveling at the almost un- 
believable total and the complexity of it. I 
watched him at close range during the last 
six years, our offices in the same building and 
our talk about all these things going on al- 
most daily, but I did not apprehend the amaz- 
ing total of his labors. 

I think it best, in the close affectionate 
spirit of these pages and so most likely to 
meet the wishes of Dr. Devins' friends, to 
dwell now upon only a single phase of his 
life work, and upon the ending of it. This 
phase of his work was one that engaged him 
deeply from his first life in the vicinity of 
New York City, and with increasing devotion 
and practical consecration to it, until the end. 
It was the first public philanthropic work he 
engaged in, and was the last work that he did 



FINISH AND NEW START 105 



on earth; and, so far as we can judge, he sac- 
rificed, at the last, in that work and his total 
devotion to it, what might perhaps have been, 
without that sacrifice, more years of earthly 
life. I refer of course, to the work of the 
Tribune Fresh Air Fund, which every sum- 
mer gives country outings of generous length 
to children of the tenements. 

From the beginning of student days in 
New York young Devins fell in love with that 
beautiful and practical charity, and served it 
in every possible way for many years with- 
out any financial compensation — and that 
during just the years when his struggle to find 
means to keep him alive for his studies was 
most terrific. Every year saw him giving 
more thought and service to this cause, and 
every year the service was of a higher and 
more valuable sort; yet never, to the last 
day of his life, did he lessen his earlier habit 
of the closest possible touch with the individ- 
ual children and his interest in every smallest 
thing that affected their happiness and wel- 
fare. I think that a moment's meditation 
over that last sentence may be most illuminat- 
ing regarding the extraordinary characteris- 
tics of his philanthropic work, differentiating 
him from most even of the best of philan- 
thropic workers. 

When the Rev. Willard Parsons, the or- 



106 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

iginator and long time Manager of the Trib- 
une Fresh Air Fund, laid down his work in 
1906, Dr. Devins was chosen to succeed him, 
and at once entered upon the duties of the 
office. He displayed at once the largest 
statesmanship regarding the work. The 
Tribune said of this, after his death: 

" Amid the successes of the year the Trib- 
une Fresh Air Fund suffered one irreparable 
loss in the death of the man who for five 
years had so ably directed its activities, the 
Rev. Dr. John Bancroft Devins. No man 
ever brought to his work a heart more de- 
voted nor a genius better adapted to its re- 
quirements than did this truly great man. 
Taking hold of the Fresh Air work at the 
point where his predecessor, the Rev. Willard 
Parsons, had left it, he continued and aug- 
mented its success. What executive ability 
he combined with his greatness of heart is 
shown by the things in the work that are 
peculiarly his. He found the Tribune Fund a 
great organization for sending children to the 
country, but he was not content to continue it 
with that one aim. He felt that there were 
to be found among the multitudes of the poor, 
little children whose cases were deserving of 
special attention. Starting with this idea, he 
was led by a careful study of conditions to 
institute what might be called a policy of 



FINISH AND NEW START 107 



specialization. The result of this was the 
establishment of the home for undernourished 
children at Shokan, the homes for convales- 
cents at Middletown and Deposit, and the 
homes for older girls and boys at Chapel Hill 
and Bethany. The point to which above all 
others, however, Dr. Devins directed his at- 
tention was the increasing of the revenues of 
the Fund. He so systematized this matter 
that during each year of his incumbency the 
number of contributors went up by leaps and 
bounds. It is sufficient to say in this regard 
that in five years the number of people giving 
annually to the cause which lay so near the 
heart of the great leader has been increased 
from 891 to 3,301." He wrote September 
1, 1910: " I have prayed for big tasks, and 
I have one ; now I pray for money to pay the 
bills." 

He remained at his post during the entire 
hot summer of 191 1, in his Observer office 
every morning, at his Fresh Air Fund office 
in The Tribune building every afternoon and 
night, usually until midnight or later. There 
were a thousand details of the work upon 
which he felt that he must keep his hand, 
thousands of poor children who could not 
have their fortnight in the country unless he 
secured more funds. Mrs. Devins, too ill to 
be away from home, was with him until Mon- 



108 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

day, August 21, when he took her to North- 
field, spent a single hour there and returned 
to his office. Tuesday and Wednesday were 
spent in the two offices until after midnight. 
He posted a brief and characteristic note to 
Mrs. Devins as he left the office Wednesday 
night signing it, " Your sleepy, loving John." 
He was taken ill on the trolley car to his 
Brooklyn home, and was very ill after reach- 
ing there, so that the faithful and devoted 
housekeeper summoned a doctor at once, who 
presently called another. All day Thursday 
he sat propped with cushions in a steamer 
chair, the telephone in his hand much of the 
time, his secretary and helper from his two 
offices often with him, directing The Observer 
and Fresh Air Fund work. On Friday he 
was weaker, often dozing, but working 
steadily. He was unconscious Friday night. 
Mrs. Devins was telegraphed for, a trained 
nurse secured, the doctors constant in attend- 
ance; and at six o'clock he passed unexpect- 
edly and quietly from earth. Mrs. Devins 
arriving from Northfield later, and met by a 
friend who did not know of the end, entered 
his room to find him dead. May God com- 
fort her ! He does. 

The New Start. Every letter he wrote in 
those last days seems to have been full of his 
heart hunger to help more of " his children " 



FINISH AND NEW START 109 



to God's out-of-doors. One of the many be- 
fore me, written to a friend in Philadelphia, 
gives the longest of its three brief paragraphs 
to that: "I take great pleasure in seeing 
the children go to the country, although it 
means few hours of sleep during July and 
August, but it means a great many hours of 
pleasure to the children. " 

Regarding his New Start in his Father's 
House, who can help applying to him these 
words which he spoke not long before at the 
funeral of his long-time friend, the Rev. Dr. 
O'Connor: " What a beautiful thing to finish 
your life work and stop ! So many men and 
women have finished their work and are now 
existing. You can't imagine Dr. O'Connor 
not working. He is doing something now. 
He was a man by the side of the road help- 
ing the fellow who needed his help the most. 
Dr. O'Connor was faithful to every call. I 
can't imagine Dr. O'Connor turning anyone 
away who needed help. You can't help men 
by hating them. He loved men. He was 
not holding up a hierarchy, he was holding up 
Christ. Here at his coffin I pledge myself 
to a nobler, purer work for Jesus Christ. 
Will you?" 



CHAPTER XVII 



TRIBUTES 

Like the beauty and perfume of chosen 
flowers sent by friends, like the assuaging 
balm of soft music in the dark, like a touch 
of a tender hand when words fail; being in- 
deed the sympathy of God Himself ministered 
from the other room of our Father's house, 
where our friend had gone to stay, through 
His children's tender-hearted fellow-feeling; 
alleviating grief and quickening courage ; were 
the words spoken, written, printed, which 
came innumerable, blessing, heartening. A 
volume would not hold them, although a 
heart can. They have been studied, classi- 
fied, and from selected ones of each class sen- 
tences have been chosen to illustrate the wide- 
ness of appreciation and sympathy mani- 
fested, and, especially, the extraordinary va- 
riety of the interests, devotions and achieve- 
ments of Dr. Devins. The first of these, 
published in The Continent, was entitled, 
" The Passing of a Greatheart Soul " and 
read: 

For years no news more startling to the 
Presbyterian Church has gone abroad through 

no 



TRIBUTES in 



its fellowship than the announcement on Sat- 
urday last of the death of Dr. John Bancroft 
Devins, the editor of The New York Ob- 
server. Among the self-made men whom 
America is proud to claim as a characteristic 
glory of the republic, not one has ever shown 
a more splendid pluck and steadfastness 
of purpose than John Bancroft Devins. 
Born fifty-five years ago in the city of New 
York, in poverty that would submerge any 
but the most heroic soul, he fought his way 
to a position in life and an esteem among his 
fellows equally creditable to his intellectual 
quality and his spiritual mettle. Through 
a tremendous struggle, he obtained an educa- 
tion for the ministry, graduating from New 
York University in 1882 and Union Seminary 
in 1887. Ordained to the ministry in 1888, 
he served, with notable strength and success, 
ten years as pastor of Hope Chapel and four 
years as pastor of Broome Street Tabernacle, 
downtown churches in New York, feeling the 
full stress of the city problem. 

In his student days Dr. Devins had largely 
supported himself by reportorial work on The 
New York Tribune, and this experience in 
journalism gave him the liking for printer's 
ink which, in the year 1898, occasioned his 
joining the staff of The New York Observer, 
the famous Presbyterian paper identified with 



ii2 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

the influential Prime and Stoddard families. 
Four years later he became the editor of the 
paper, and has conducted it ever since in loyal 
devotion to the highest purposes of religious 
journalism. 

But his editorial labors could not exhaust 
the abundant vitality of the man, and an in- 
eradicable sense of affiliation with the poor 
of New York, whose trial and privation he 
had once shared, expressed itself through an 
active and laborious interest in almost every 
form of civic charity known to the great me- 
tropolis. He was a strong helper in the New 
York Association for Improving the Condi- 
tion of the Poor and in the Home for the 
Friendless, the latter of which was much en- 
larged through gifts that he secured. But 
the interest which most of all consumed him 
was the Tribune Fresh Air Fund, of which he 
has been since 1907 the manager. To give 
the boys and girls of New York slums an an- 
nual taste of God's free air in the country be- 
came a passion to him, and to that undoubt- 
edly Dr. Devins sacrificed his life; for with- 
out question the explanation of his untimely 
decease is his tremendous overwork of the 
past summer in superintending this very prac- 
tical charity. 

Nor did organizational philanthropy com- 
pass the kindness of his heart Dr. Devins 



TRIBUTES 



113 



wherever he went, was the most thoughtful 
and helpful of men. When reproached for 
apparently indiscriminate giving to beg- 
gars, he only replied: 11 You never kaew 
yourself what it means to be hungry." The 
working people of the Presbyterian building, 
where he has had his office for many years, 
were devotedly attached to him because they 
had all had experience of his personal kind- 
ness. A true Greatheart, full of the tender- 
ness and loving kindness of his Master, Dr. 
Devins has enshrined in thousands of hearts 
a memory that is as noble an epitaph as any 
human life may win. — From The Con- 
tinent. 

* * * 

We left our table at the General Assembly 
last May, at the close of a weary morning ses- 
sion, forgetting to take with us our friend, the 
fountain pen. We remembered ere half the 
distance down the " steel pier " had been trav- 
ersed and hurried back to the table of The 
Continent. No pen was visible. Some 
lover of relics had gathered it in. The call 
on the attendants brought no results. An ad- 
vertisement from the Assembly rostrum in 
the afternoon was heard by all present, for 
the assistant stated clerk gave it, but, alas! 
was answered by none. The pen had gone. 

Two days later there came to our table a 



ii 4 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

man carrying in his hand two pens. " Have 
you found your pen? " he asked. A negative 
head shake was the answer. " Try these," 
said the man. We obeyed. " Which is the 
better?" he inquired. We held up one. 
" My compliments," said the man, and turned 
to go. " Wait ! " we called. " This is not a 
new pen. It bears the marks of use. It is 
your own. We cannot take this." " My 
compliments," he repeated: " glad to serve 
you." And he hurried away. 

The man was Dr. John Bancroft Devins, 
and the pen is now writing this little story. 

Now for the point. On the Monday after 
the sudden death of the lamented editor of 
The New York Observer, we called at The 
Observer office in the Presbyterian building, 
New York, where for years he had wrought. 
We offered our word of sympathy to the one 
who had been editorial assistant and, among 
other things, we spoke of this gift of the pen. 
" Yes," was the reply, " I knew. The doc- 
tor came over from you that day and said, 
' Well, I've given Dr. Holmes my pen.' 
4 What?' I answered. 'Your pet pen?' 
' Yes.' ' Why, what will you do? ' I asked 
again. ' You have written with that pen for 
years.' ' Oh, well, that's nothing. He 
needs it. He'll make better use of it than I.' " 

Simple story. In that was the spirit of 



TRIBUTES 115 

Sir Philip Sidney at Zutphen enacted once 
more. It was a simple act, but life's great- 
est acts are simple. There are many peo- 
ple in the city of New York who can tell sim- 
ilar stories about Dr. Devins. He had thor- 
oughly learned the lesson of need and sacri- 
fice. A man must have suffered himself or 
he cannot know how to draw nigh to suffer- 
ing with needed aid. At some time or in 
some degree one must have been " down and 
out," if he is to be of real service in helping 
others " up and in." One need not have been 
an awful sinner in order to have been on " the 
lower side of things." Birth may have put 
him there. Our country has produced many, 
both men and women, who were born 
" down " and died " up." The man who 
surmounts inherited difficulty is one of Car- 
lyle's kings. Of such was he with the pen 
and the genial wave of the hand and the 
words not soon to be forgotten, " My compli- 
ments." 

Chivalry in its best days did nothing finer. 
Larger, no doubt, but not finer. We write 
advisedly. Jesus is on record in the matter 
of a woman who gave two mites to the temple 
treasury. " More than they all," he said. 
His was a spiritual measuring line. Look 
at this gift of a pen from a spiritual 
point of view. A writer's pen to which he 



ti6 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

has become wedded is like the pocket knife 
of a whittler. It grows to the hand that 
holds it. No other pen feels like it; no other 
will write like it. One almost dares to add, 
no other can think like it. Good paper, good 
ink, and a pen which fits the hand! Who 
can tell what the outcome of such a combina- 
tion will be? Dr. Devins was parting with 
an editorial asset when he said with such 
nonchalance, " My compliments." 

This little story of Dr. Devins is, like the 
pen of which it tells, nothing without its point. 
That point is that the value of benevolence 
is not in size or amount, but in devotion to 
Jesus Christ which underlies it. We wish the 
world had kept no record of the sum total of 
the money value of the gifts given by men 
and women of wealth. There are people liv- 
ing to-day who have given away more than 
they at the present time possess. 

The old Latin word sacer is the basis 
of the word sacrifice. A sacrifice is some- 
thing that has been made over to God by an 
oath. Its eye (surely the figure is legiti- 
mate) looks out toward God, and its mouth 
says, " I and my maker are thine." How 
much looking toward God is there in the 
money which is dropped, nickels and dimes, 
into the Sunday collection plate? The of- 
ficiating clergymen must perforce see the 



TRIBUTES 117 



plates as the offering gatherers stand before 
the pulpit waiting for the prayer of consecra- 
tion. The faces on the coins look up toward 
the preacher or down into the bottom of the 
plate and not a glance says, " We represent a 
sacrifice. " The minister, if he were honest, 
might well pray, " Lord, here are pennies, 
nickels, dimes, representing the abundance 
that thou hast given us. We had these in 
our pockets ; our checkbooks we have left at 
home." The prayer would tell the truth, but 
the minister would be asked by a grieved peo- 
ple to seek another field. 

Are we allowing our pen to wander from 
its point? Not in the least. The pen in our 
hand is our ever-present reminder of the sac- 
rifice that made it ours. Sacrifice without 
cost is impossible. There must be death of 
sentiment of some kind. The writer is 
swayed by sentiment. He grows to love his 
pen. The large-hearted man who said, " My 
compliments," was parting with that which 
had become identified with himself. Had he 
written with it his interesting letters of travel? 
Did it trace the lines of the books he made? 
Did it make appeals in behalf of the army of 
children who owed to its wielder their trips 
to the country when the hot summer days 
came ? It was not his brain that Dr. Devins 
passed so generously to a friend. It was the 



n8 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

instrument of his power, around which the 
tendrils of sentiment had twined. We did 
not know what the gift meant to the giver on 
the day he placed it in our hand. Since we 
have learned, we write with a new under- 
standing of the word sacrifice. 

R. S. H. 

* * * 

" New York City has lost one of its best 
citizens in the sudden death of Dr. John Ban- 
croft Devins. His first charge, in East 
Fourth Street Presbyterian Chapel, was 
among the poor, and he gave himself to it 
with the industry and resourcefulness that 
marked all his activities. He promoted the 
Federation of East Side Workers, because 
he saw that wretchedness knew no denomi- 
national bounds. The Society for Improve- 
ing the Condition of the Poor found use for 
his talents as manager of its employment 
bureau. Later he was the English pastor of 
Broome Street Tabernacle. And all the time 
he was lifting in every cause which had at 
heart the social or spiritual welfare of the 
plain people of Manhattan. Naturally 
enough he was selected to manage the noble 
charity known as ' The Tribune Fresh Air 
Fund ' when its originator laid it down a few 
years ago. A thoroughly trained journalist, 
Dr. Devins had written for and edited peri- 



TRIBUTES 119 



odicals of many sorts when he came to the 
managing editorship of The New York Ob- 
server, in 1898. Since 1902 he has been the 
editor of this staunch Presbyterian weekly, 
our nearest neighbor. Firm in the faith, 
scrupulously fair to his opponents, studiously 
striving to serve Presbyterianism, and through 
it the whole cause of evangelical Christianity, 
Dr. Devins has been a worthy successor of the 
great editorial line of The Observer." — 

The Christian Advocate. 

* * * 

" The mission cause never had a better 
friend than the editor of The New York Ob- 
server, whose sudden death on August 26th, 
191 1, brought sorrow to many hearts in many 
lands. 

" John Bancroft Devins by voice and pen, 
through secular and religious press, by per- 
sonal visitation and letter was known and 
loved throughout the world. We can well 
believe that hundreds of missionaries who 
have gone out under the Presbyterian Board 
during the last few years will recall with 
pleasure the delightful hours spent as guests 
of the Presbyterian Union during the annual 
June reception for newly appointed mission- 
aries. These hours were made delightful 
largely by the painstaking care and unselfish 
service, the scrupulous attention to details, on 



i2o JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

the part of Dr. Devins. In every way he 
was the friend of the missionary. In his trip 
around the world he spent most of his time 
with missionaries. His pen was ever ready 
to defend their cause, make known their 
wants, spread about the wondrous story of 
their devotion. He had a vision of things at 
home and of things abroad. He plead for 
the Bowery outcast and the consumptive in 
the East Side tenement. His appeal for the 
children ' soaked in the city's slime,' asking 
that a breath of fresh air might be given 
them, linked Dr. Devins with fresh air work 
the country over. But this did not stop his 
ear to the cry of the famine-stricken ones in 
An Hui, China, nor stay his hand for the 
castaway children of the Ganges, nor harden 
his heart to the needs of the dark-skinned 
waifs of Uncle Sam in the Philippines. He 
had the Christlike spirit which knew no 
geographical, racial, or social boundaries. 

" In behalf of the missionary we place to- 
day a wreath of loving, loyal affection, to the 
memory of John Bancroft Devins." 

From The Assembly Herald. 
* * * 

" The sudden death last week at his home 
in Brooklyn from an attack of acute indiges- 
tion of the Rev. Dr. John Bancroft Devins, 
editor of the New York Observer, startled 



TRIBUTES 



121 



and greatly grieved his wide circle of friends. 
Dr. Devins was at his office on Wednesday, 
and on Saturday morning his death was an- 
nounced. To his position as editor of the 
Observer he brought considerable journalistic 
experience gained from his connection for sev- 
eral years with the reportorial staff of The 
New York Tribune. His editorship of The 
Observer was marked with acknowledged 
efficiency, his aim being to collect the religious 
news of the country as fully and completely 
as the newspapers collect the daily happen- 
ings in the world at large. In 1903-4, while 
on a tour of the world he remained in the 
Philippines long enough to complete a book 
of 4 Observations ' on the islands which he 
dedicated to Col. Roosevelt, and which con- 
tained a foreword written by President Taft. 
In recent years, besides engaging in his edi- 
torial work, Dr. Devins has had charge of 
several funds raised to send children from the 
East Side to the country for the summer 
months. He was cut down in the midst of 
his great usefulness, and 4 the mourners go 
about the streets.' The Intelligencer assures 
his bereaved family and The Observer of sin- 
cere sympathy." 

* * * 

" John Bancroft Devins, whose sudden 
death is recorded elsewhere in our columns, 



122 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

enriched the world by his life, and leaves in 
his death a distinct sense of loss. As a prac- 
tical newspaper man of much versatility and 
energy, as a Christian pastor and preacher, 
as manager of the Tribune Fresh Air Fund 
and in various other labors, public and pri- 
vate, he served his day and generation with 
singular sincerity and faithfulness and with a 
more than ordinary degree of efficiency. He 
commanded the confidence and affection of his 
associates, and he leaves behind him among 
a multitude the memory of a blameless char- 
acter and a useful career." — The New York 
Tribune. 

* * * 

u Profound sorrow has been expressed dur- 
ing the week at the sudden death of the Rev. 
Dr. John Bancroft Devins, editor of The New 
York Observer, philanthropist and publicist. 
Dr. Devins was one of the strong men of the 
Presbyterian Church locally, and was known 
and loved by a large part of the membership. 
He had as many friends among the multi- 
races of the East Side through his settlement 
work and management of fresh air work. 
He had a breadth uncommon in a denomina- 
tional editor and a love for his fellow man 
which kept his hand constantly giving to the 
unfortunate. Reproved once for indiscrimi- 
nate giving, when he had been appealed to 



TRIBUTES 



123 



by a down-and-out man, he said to his critic: 
1 You never knew what it was to be hungry 
and broke.' The secret was that he knew this 
of his own experience and he felt for every 
one in need and gave freely." — From The 
New York Mail 

* * Jfc 

" The death of Dr. Devins was so sudden 
that the church is only beginning to realize 
its loss. He will be missed in his ministry 
to thousands of New York's poor children 
through the Tribune Fresh Air Fund. He 
will be missed as the secretary of the New 
York Presbyterian Social Union, of which he 
was the mainstay. He will be missed in the 
Presbytery and the many philanthropic insti- 
tutions of which he was a director. He will 
be missed as editor of his paper. . But per- 
haps he will be missed the most, next to his 
home, by his friends. Big as was his body, 

his heart was bigger." — The Continent. 
* * * 

" The Rev. Dr. John Bancroft Devins, ed- 
itor and proprietor of The New York Ob- 
server, suddenly ceased to work and live, on 
August 26, in the prime of his vigorous, ener- 
getic, busy, useful life. We learned to know 
and love this good man during our Northfield 
days, when he was pastor of the Broome 
Street Tabernacle in New York City, and 



i2 4 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

on the reportorial staff of The New York 
Tribune. Few men have come up to the chief 
editorship of a great religious journal with 
such a full, all-round training as did Dr. Dev- 
ins, when he succeeded his great editorial 
predecessors of The New York Observer. 
And what an editor he was ! His life was 
crowded with incessant activities for the good 
of others. He had enormous working ca- 
pacity, and covered a wide range of good 
works. He was editor, author, lecturer, 
preacher, pastor, traveler, manager, director, 
counselor, 4 and at all times the friend of the 
poor and the needy.' " — The Harrisburg 
Evangelical. 

* * * 

" The loss which your paper has sustained 
has been felt by the entire religious press of 
America and by none more than by us of the 
old Christian Intelligencer, whose associations 
with your editors from the Drs. Prime to Dr. 
Devins have been so close and so cordial. 
With much sympathy we are, 

" Yours fraternally, 
" The Editors of The Christian Intelligencer. }} 



CHAPTER XVIII 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 

The funeral services were held on the 
evening of August 28 in the Central Presby- 
terian Church of Brooklyn, N. Y., with which 
Dr. and Mrs. Devins were connected. They 
were most impressive — made so by the large 
attendance of friends and fellow-workers, by 
the wealth of the floral tributes adorning the 
casket and platform, and by the character of 
the occasion. The services were conducted 
by the Rev. John F. Carson, D. D., pas- 
tor of the church and then moderator of the 
Presbyterian General Assembly. After the 
invocation and the reading of the Scriptures 
by President Calvin H. French, D. D., of 
Huron College, South Dakota, Dr. Carson 
said: 

14 The solo which is to be sung was very 
dear to the heart of our beloved brother, who 
long ago intimated that it might be sung on 
such an occasion as this. After the render- 
ing of that solo prayer will be offered by Dr. 
W. H. Foulkes, of the Rutgers Church of 
New York." 

The solo sung was the hymn entitled 
44 Only Remembered," and beginning: 

125 



126 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

" Fading away like the stars of the morning," 
the words being by Horatius Bonar and the 
music by Ira D. Sankey. Dr. Foulkes then 
led in prayer. 

Addresses were made by the Rev. Charles 
Augustus Stoddard, D. D., the former ed- 
itor and owner of The New York Observer; 
the Rev. Charles Stelzle, superintendent of 
the Department of Church and Labor of the 
Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, and 
Dr. Carson. 

Dr. Stoddard said among other things : 
" If ever there was one who lived an un- 
selfish, and in that sense Christlike life, Dr. 
Devins was that man; self was the last thing 
that he thought of, everybody else came first, 
before he even sought his daily food or rest 
at night. 

" I ought to say something of our relations 
together ; it is almost too sacred now that he is 
gone — about some of our mutual confi- 
dences. He was to me, whose sons had been 
taken away in their childhood, as a son, al- 
ways careful of my needs and shielding me 
as the years went on, from a great many things 
which would have been very trying. There 
was no reason for his doing this, ex- 
cept that he loved me and I loved him. In 
all of our relations through these many years, 
I cannot think of any occasion when there was 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 127 

a shadow of misapprehension, misunderstand- 
ing in opinions or unfriendliness in all of our 
associations. 

" Now, some of you know something about 
editorial work and the obstacles of newspaper 
life, and how hard it is to come to a con- 
clusion about important matters, and how 
good men will differ in regard to things. In 
sincerity and truth I can say that there was 
never a shadow of unkindness between Dr. 
Devins and myself in all those years — 
everything was as Christian and courteous 
and loving as it was possible to be between 
two men. And I think the reason was, aside 
from his unselfishness, which I think was 
born in him, that he was a sincere Christian. 
He had Christ for his motto, he tried to live 
like Christ and speak as Christ would, and act 
as Christ would have done. In all of our edi- 
torial relations, difficult times and years of 
anxiety, when he was in the midst of things 
that would upset a great many men, he was 
faithful to all his promises; he was forceful 
and successful in all that he undertook, and 
he did a great and good work through The 
New York Observer during the years in 
which he was associated with it. The work 
that he did went out into this land, into all 
lands; it was a joy and delight to me to see 
this young, strong man going forward in the 



128 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

course which I knew was to be not only for 
his own advancement, but for the benefit of 
all connected with him. He thought out new 
ways of presenting the truth — he said, ' Let 
us keep our standard high, clear, strong and 
bright — let us give new illustrations in all 
our Christian work and Christian thought,' 
and he was earnest and unflinching to those 
ends. 

" When Dr. Devins entered the service of 
The Observer, he made one request of me — 
almost a condition — that he might be al- 
lowed to carry on what might be called his 
charitable work. If I had had any idea of 
the expansive force which was to be given 
to that simple statement — 1 charitable work ' 
— I should have said to him, 1 My dear son, 
don't touch The Observer, put your whole 
strength into charitable work, and you will 
do more good than you can do here. He did 
both well; those of you who have noticed the 
way in which he conducted the paper have 
been satisfied that it was well done, and I am 
sure that those who have known anything of 
the many kinds of charitable work that 
he did, know how well they were done. 
Think of raising $49,000 to send 1 1,000 chil- 
dren into country homes. This he did 
through the agency of the Tribune Fresh Air 
Fund, of which he was manager, and which 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 129 



he conducted in a most systematic and busi- 
nesslike way — without any fuss, without the 
loss of a single penny to the work, without 
serious accident or without any gain to him- 
self, except from the reward of doing good. 
If I may judge by the sorrow that fills my 
own heart and of that which must come to 
those who are deeply interested, I can only 
say with the loving, earnest prayers of our 
brother, Dr. Foulkes : ' May these stricken 
hearts be comforted — may we who have suf- 
fered so suddenly and so seriously by this be- 
reavement know how to bear it and improve 
it.' I thought I was dumb and could not 
open my mouth, but I thank God He has per- 
mitted me to lay here this tribute on the 
casket of my friend. May God bless and 
sanctify this sorrow and this service to us." 

* * * 

The tribute of the Rev. Charles Stelzle 
was in substance as follows : 

" I think I can understand why so many 
Hope Chapel people are here to-night. I 
can recall very distinctly, it seems to me it 
must be about twenty-three years ago, when 
Dr. Devins came to Hope Chapel — when 
I was a boy there. 

" Dr. Stoddard spoke of Dr. Devins' 
charitable work; he never spoke of it as 
1 charitable work ' when he did it — that was 



130 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

the fine thing about him. He did much more 
than will ever be known this side of glory for 
our people on the East Side of New York. I 
would not try to give any figures because 
those that come to me in these moments seem 
so large you could scarcely believe them, but 
thousands and thousands of dollars were lit- 
erally given out of his own pocket — some- 
times more than the salary that was paid him 
— to the people among whom he labored. I 
know what Dr. Devins meant to the people 
here to-night, and I know there is many an 
aching heart as now our thoughts turn to the 
friend who has gone beyond. 

" I am very glad on this occasion to speak 
of my personal appreciation of what Dr. 
Devins meant to me. When Dr. Devins 
came to Hope Chapel I was a young fellow, 
just about entering the machine shop on the 
East Side of New York City, not having 
many opportunities of education and some 
other things which I have since enjoyed. I 
recall all that Dr. Devins meant to me, say 
at the age of fifteen and sixteen to twenty- 
one. You know what a friend means to a 
fellow of that sort — Dr. Devins was that 
kind. I was not afraid to come to him with 
anything; he knew more of the secrets of my 
life than any man in this world. I told him 
freely because he was a friend, because of 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 131 



that sympathy which was so manifest in every 
relationship of life. In spite of that strong 
frame of his, he was tender as a child; he 
sympathized most lovingly, for he himself 
had passed through those afflictions — he was 
kin to all men. I remember well how as a 
boy he led me through the Christian En- 
deavor Society, the Sunday-school and 
through the organizations of Hope Chapel. 

" When I felt I must study for the min- 
istry, even though I was a member of another 
church at that time in another city, I went 
to Dr. Devins and told him that I wanted 
to study for the ministry. It was Dr. Dev- 
ins who helped me to enter the Moody School 
in Chicago, and I recall also that Dr. Devins 
loaned me the fare to go to Chicago to be- 
gin my work of preparation for the Gospel 
ministry when so few other people thought I 
would ever amount to anything in the work of 
Jesus Christ; it w T as Dr. Devins that helped 
me and pushed me forward and encouraged 
me to go on in the way I felt God had called 
me. 

" When Dr. Devins went to The New 
York Observer and I was called from a little 
church in Minneapolis to succeed him at Hope 
Chapel I felt honored, for during all those 
early days it was Dr. Devins who gave me 
my ideal for social service. I do not hesitate 



r 3 2 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

to say that in my ministry to the common 
people during the twelve years, the forma- 
tive period of my life, that it was Dr. Devins 
who gave me that ideal, through his own 
personal work and his conversation and the 
many things that he wrote in The Observer 
and elsewhere. There was no one man who 
gave me larger vision of social service than 
Dr. Devins. 

" As a pastor, I remember the first Sun- 
day that I came to the Chapel Dr. Devins 
came up to me and said: 1 Now, Mr. Stelzle, 
if you want me to go away from here, I will 
go ; ' he knew all of the possible embarrass- 
ment which he might be to me a young man 
coming to New York to a church of which 
he had been the pastor. I said to him : ■ No, 
never, stay here with me.' Dr. Devins and 
his family came for two years or more to the 
chapel where I went as a: boy; he came faith- 
fully every Sunday morning, whereas he 
might have gone to an uptown church — it 
would have been far more comfortable, and 
the preaching would have been better there, 
but instead he sat as my friend and my in- 
spirer as I preached to the people in Hope 
Chapel. There are other things of which I 
might speak, but I know what Dr. Devins 
means to you, my friends, as you know what 
he has meant to me." 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 133 



We give the tribute of the Rev. John F. 
Carson, D. D., in full: 

" John Bancroft Devins — that is a name 
honored in Presbyterianism as but few names 
are honored, honored throughout the Chris- 
tian Church and honored in all the circles of 
life where he is known. 

" As I think of Dr. Devins to-night, let- 
ting my mind go back over the years in which 
it was our privilege to have such close and in- 
timate fellowship, I think I can sum it up in 
a few sentences. He was a man of untiring 
energy, an energy that was devoted and con- 
secrated to definite issues; he was a ceaseless 
worker, inspired by a holy ambition to serve 
His Master. When he determined upon a 
college course, he entered the New York Uni- 
versity, from which he graduated and as a 
writer on the newspaper he provided for him- 
self the means which made possible his uni- 
versity and theological education. Graduat- 
ing from Union Seminary, he had with him 
that splendid consciousness which comes to a 
man who has made his own way by honor- 
able means. He sought no easy place of 
service, but went yonder to Hope Chapel, 
called as he knew of God, into the service of 
those to whom the Master would bid him al- 
most specially to preach. From Hope 
Chapel he went to Broome Street Tabernacle, 



i 3 4 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

putting his life at the service of the people. 
To-night, as Dr. Stoddard has said, we, who 
knew of his Christlike ministry, have come 
here to call him blessed. 

" He enters the editorial office, but he is 
not content to spend his time and energy in 
the tasks, however arduous they may be, of 
the editor's position. Looking out upon the 
great city of New York with its teeming mil- 
lions of children, his heart and his thought 
go out to them, and he puts himself back of 
that Fresh Air Fund that makes possible a 
holiday this year for about eleven thousand 
children of the poor. My friends, if the 
Tribune Fund has done a service for the chil- 
dren of New York City, it has done it be- 
cause John B. Devins largely made it pos- 
sible. 

" This morning I took up the latest num- 
ber of The New York Observer, I read 
through its pages — I read its editorials and 
then I came to the report of this year's work 
of the Fresh Air Fund. It was only last 
Wednesday that I received a letter from our 
brother, typewritten as Dr. Stoddard said 
his was, but after he had signed it, in his own 
handwriting he added this postscript: i I 
have had a great time this summer with our 
children.' That was like John B. Devins, 
not the children of New York, oh, not such 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 135 



a far reach as that, but ' our children.' That 
is the man all through; he identified him- 
self with the interests in which he was en- 
gaged. As I came to the close of that re- 
port, I read this sentence: ' If anything goes 
wrong and the children do not reach the train 
— but things do not go wrong and the train 
is not missed.' My friends, the things did 
not go wrong and the train was not missed, 
because there was a man there, who put every 
atom of his strength and the whole range 
of his thought and the full measure of his 
love into the service for 1 our children.' He 
was a true Greatheart. 

" In a letter which I received from him 
when I was at Northfield, not more than two 
weeks ago, he wrote me of the large work of 
this Fresh Air Fund and the burden of it, 
but also the joy in knowing that there were 
children receiving an outing who would not 
were it not for the fund. A man of untiring 
energy, John Bancroft Devins, was a man 
of deep sympathy, but his sympathy was not 
sentimental. There was nothing of that 
about this world man, this big man, this man 
of giant strength — nothing that was senti- 
mental in the sense of being effervescent, but 
no one came into close touch with him with- 
out knowing that he had a heart as big as his 
body. Dr. Stoddard has told us there was 



136 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

not an atom of selfishness in the whole big 
make up of the man. 

" My relation with him for the past few 
years has been that of pastor; I do not know 
whether he was my pastor or I was his, but 
I do know that no man ever had a brother 
who loved him as John B. Devins loved me, 
and I loved him in return. As I came into the 
pulpit Sabbath after Sabbath, it got to be a 
habit for me to look down into the center 
aisle to see if he was there, for I knew that 
if he were there, somehow the sermon was 
going to go. As I looked down, and saw in 
the play of his face responsiveness that was 
pictured there, I felt the chord and bond of 
sympathy and got the inspiration that made 
it possible — I was going to say, to preach. 
Oh, my brethren in the ministry, and there 
are many of you I see here to-night, here was 
a man who knew a pastor's heart and life, 
and if ever man had a friend who loved to 
have him do his best and work for results, 
I had it in this beloved brother. He was a 
faithful friend, and if at times there would 
be some things in the church that were a lit- 
tle burdensome, Dr. Devins would come up 
and put his arms around me and say, ' It is 
all right, it will come out all right.' Just a 
little while ago I got a little pessimistic, and 
you will remember at the close of a com- 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 137 

munion Sabbath I was a little sad because 
there were not more results in the lives of the 
people. After the service, he led me into 
the side room and talked it all out and I lost 
my pessimism in the buoyancy and the op- 
timism of this man's soul — that is friendship 
— and he was a friend. But I am not sor- 
rowing to-night, I have not lost him, you have 
not lost him. I shall not take time to speak 
of him in his Christian faith; it was deep as 
his experiences were deep — he knew his 
God and his Saviour. 

" I hold here a little hymn which he com- 
posed some years ago, the music of which is 
written by our sainted Ira D. Sankey. In 
the fourth verse of this hymn he speaks of the 
thought, 1 We would see Jesus — We would 
hear Jesus — We would serve Jesus ' — then 
he combines them all into this last line — 
' Seeing, hearing, learning, speaking,' but 
there it does not end, then the man of it comes 
in. 

" 6 Serving daily, faithfully ; 

May men see in us, Thy brethren, 
All that Thou wouldst have us be.' 

" That was his one great thought as a 
Christian man — a reflection of the life of 
Christ within. He lived a very large life, 
this man of God, and it worked itself out in 



138 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

so varied a service — a pastor, a preacher 
and an editor, a traveler — an author, a phi- 
lanthropist. Let us underscore that last 
word, a philanthropist; no, he did not give 
away large sums of money — if he had it, he 
would have given it all away, but he gave 
himself away to the services of the needy. I 
do not think he only is a philanthropist who 
has large wealth to distribute; fine and 
glorious as that is, it is utterly insignificant 
when compared with the splendid service of 
this man, who gave himself so devotedly to 
the cause of the needy and the suffering, any- 
where, everywhere, and so he came to be 
honored by all men. Institutions of learn- 
ing honored him, his own alma mater, the 
University of New York, gave him a degree. 
Center College in Kentucky gave him the de- 
gree of Doctor of Divinity — Huron College 
in South Dakota gave him the degree of Doc- 
tor of Laws — why? Because his life and 
ministry had touched in knowledge at least 
all these institutions, and they loved to put 
on him their distinction because it brought to 
them distinction and honor. I have known 
men, I have come into close touch with men 
in the twenty-six years that I have lived and 
labored in this Greater City of New York, 
and there have been but few men whom I 
would place side by side with this big, brainy, 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 139 



Jesus, Saviour, We Would See Thee. 

" We would see Jesus."— John 12 : 21. 
Rev. John Bancroft Devins. Ira D. Sankey. 

Is 



1. Je-sus, Sav-iour, we would see Thee, Lift-ed high up - on the tree; 

2. Je-sus, Teacher we would hear Thee, Hear Thy voice and it a - lone: 

3. Je-sus, Master, we would serve Thee, Fill each day with lov-ing deeds; 

4. Seeing, hearing, learning, speaking, Serving dai - ly, faith- ful- ly; 



m 




Bear-ing there our sins and sor-rows, Set-ting us for-ev-er free. 
Learn the lessons Thou wouldst teach us, Speak the words that Thou wilt own. 
Comfort those whose hearts are weary, Like Thy-self sup-ply their needs. 
May men see in us, Thy brethren, All that Thou wouldst have us be. 

fit- fit.^0^0 



mm 



Chorus 




We would see Jesus, we would see Jesus; He is our Saviour, and glorious King; 



& t? r 




Him would we follow, thro' sunshine and shadow; Now and forever His praises will 

^ [ sing. 



, LL ._u. u -jr r g g=gd 

Copyright, 1902, by The Biglow & Main Co. Used by per. 



i 4 o JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

great-hearted, superb and loving man — John 
Bancroft Devins. He has entered into glory 
— fifty-five years old, cut off in the midst of 
his day — oh ! what a poor thing that would 
be to say. If it is true we live in deeds, 
what a long stretch of life this man had. 
His physician said on Saturday morning, ' He 
has just worked himself out ' — just worked 
himself out — that is what he wanted to do, 
and he wanted to die just as he did die — in 
the midst of his labors. 

" There are just two passages of Scripture 
that I would quote with reference to him. 
First, ' He went about doing good ' — the 
other, that passage which the Master spoke 
when He was on the earth, which, oh, I be- 
lieve, I know that He spoke to this ransomed 
spirit when it came into His presence — 1 In- 
asmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye have done it 
unto me.' He went into that glory, the 
finest, the highest, the greatest glory that can 
come to a redeemed spirit — Jesus knew 
what he was talking about — the glory that 
comes to a life that loses itself in the service 
of humanity. 

" My beloved friends, he lives to-night and 
in his fellowship we will continue to live. 
May God grant unto us to follow him as he 
always followed Christ Jesus, and grant unto 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 141 



these beloved ones and immediate fellow- 
workers in service, the consolation of His 
grace and His love." 

The services closed with the benediction by 
Dr. Stoddard. 

A public memorial service in memory of 
Dr. Devins* was held in the Central Presby- 
terian Church of New York City on the after- 
noon of Sunday October 8, 191 1. On the 
pulpit platform were the Rev. George Alex- 
ander, D. D., moderator of the Presbytery 
of New York; the Rev. Jesse F. Forbes, D. 
D., stated clerk of the Presbytery; the Rev. 
David G. Wylie, D. D., the Rev. Henry 
Mottet, D. D., rector of the Church of the 
Holy Communion, and the Rev. Wilton- 
Merle Smith, D. D., pastor of the Central 
Church. 

Dr. Forbes led the devotional exercises 
and read a tribute to Dr. Devins written by 
the Rev. Charles Augustus Stoddard, D. D., 
and Dr. Wylie read a tribute from Dr. Car- 
son, the moderator of the General Assembly. 

Mr. James Yereance, an elder in the Cen- 
tral Church, read letters from John E. Par- 
sons, Jacob A. Riis and the Rev. Henry T, 
McEwen, D. D., of Amsterdam, N. Y. Dr. 
Alexander spoke with deep feeling of Dr. 
Devins as a Presbyter and emphasized 
those qualities of deep sympathy and unflinch- 



H2 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

ing loyalty to duty that characterized him, 
both as editor and pastor, in the midst of 
mountainous responsibilities. He also told 
of Dr. Devins' personal life and showed how 
his experiences had fitted him as few men are 
prepared, to do a work characterized by lov- 
ing insight into the needs of humanity. 

The Rev. Henry Mottet, D. D., said in 
part: 

" Very judiciously and wisely have the va- 
rious aspects of the late Dr. Devins' life been 
assigned to different friends, in the conscious- 
ness that to-day and here each of these 
friends would present one of the many and 
rare characteristics which explained all the 
nobility and the richness of that rare life. 
It is my privilege to speak a word bear- 
ing upon his relation to the Tribune Fresh 
Air Work. His predecessor had brought 
this to a notable state of usefulness; and 
when he was taken away, the question passed 
from lip to lip was, whether the man was 
living who possessed the ability and courage 
to take up so heavy a burden. When the call 
came to Dr. Devins and he had accepted, he 
realized absolutely that the call came from 
his Master, that the work was for his 
Master, and that the thousands and ten thou- 
sands of women and children and convales- 
cents whom this work could and must reach 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 143 



were all of them the Master's care. He was 
confident that He who called him would also 
stand by him. He had learned practically 
the chiefest of all lessons that the man who 
wholly forgets self in his care for others be- 
comes ever the special care of his Father in 
Heaven. 

" Dr. Devins was wonderfully blessed and 
prospered in this work in which he had been 
engaged not quite five brief years. 

" He gave special attention to the increase 
of financial aid, mindful that the greater the 
pecuniary resource, the larger the good to be 
accomplished. He did not depend wholly on 
The Tribune subscribers. He exercised the 
courage to make personal presentation of the 
cause to many who could and who did assist 
with exceptionally large contributions. 

" Under him were developed the special 
home for boys, also one for girls, and a new, 
separate home for those of tubercular tend- 
ency — who lived all day and slept all night 
in the open. 

" One of the twelve separate establish- 
ments he enlarged so that instead of one hun- 
dred it now houses two hundred children. 
Another of the homes he doubled in size so 
that now it welcomes and provides comfort 
for one hundred, guests. 

" He created another feature of boundless 



i 4 4 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 



blessing — a home for girls from twelve to 
sixteen years of age. 

" He collected this season a little short of 
$49,000, and he cared for almost 11,000 
women and children. 

u All this is only the most meager out- 
line; but the outline does not represent the 
finest, the most uplifting and exalted part of 
that great man's work. He did all this for 
love of God and love of his fellows. He 
sought — he lived to minister to men's bodies, 
for the opportunity so presented of lifting 
them into everlasting fellowship with God 
their Father. 

* * * 

The Rev. Dr. Wilton-Merle Smith said in 
part: — 

" It is said that Francis Xavier, greatly 
fatigued with his labors, once said to his at- 
tendant: ' Allow no one to awaken me'; 
after a little he came back to the attendant 
and said: c If a child comes, you may awaken 
me.' 

" It was the appeal of the child to the 
heart of John Devins that marked the true 
nobility of his character. A little child could 
lead him anywhere. In physical proportions 
he was great, but his heart was a great deal 
bigger. I have seldom known a man who 
had such a heart 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 145 

" John Devins was always open-hearted to 
the cry of a child, always open-hearted to the 
cry of any need. I think that the poem by 
Sam Walter Foss would be a suitable epitaph 
for the tombstone of John Devins: 

" Let me live in my house by the side of the road, 
Where the race of men go by; 
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they 
are strong, 
Wise, foolish — and so am I. 
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat, 

Or hurl the cynic's ban? 
Let me live in my house by the side of the road, 
And be a friend to man." 

That was John Devins — more wonder- 
fully did he exemplify the great-hearted 
friendliness for human beings than any man 
in our Presbytery, I venture to say. 

" You remember that other poem, when 
the angel came to Abou Ben Adhem, who 
had asked: 4 Write me as one that loved 
his fellowman.' And lo ! Ben Adhem's name 
led all the rest! It was even so with our 
dear friend. 

" You will go far to find a more beautiful 
life than the life which is held in retrospect 
to-day. He was open to every appeal of 
need, with a heart gentle as a woman, and 



146 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

yet not that alone, with courage inflexible — 
a great, strong, nobly built man. His was 
a life that had worked its way in the struggle 
against obstacles, with a courage which 
would never say die. In his earlier days, 
when a boy, he took a chance and worked out 
his own education. He not only had gentle- 
ness and lovableness of heart, but the strong, 
inflexible character of manhood. He bore 
the great rugged features of strength and 
courage and manhood that distinguished him 
to the very end of his days. 

" I love to think of my own intimacy with 
John Devins, and I think the most intimate 
part of it was in those days at Northfield, 
when as a Presbytery we went to the Con- 
ference and learned to look each other in 
the face after days of distress and contro- 
versy. I think in those days of intimacy 
with John Devins these two things stood out 
in the man: the lovable gentleness and the 
strong inflexible courage. No one could turn 
him from the path that he thought to be 
right. 

" As Dr. McEwen wrote, 4 There never 
was a false note in anything which he said.' 

" There is a tradition of the early Church, 
that if one of the Christian leaders died, some 
friend stepped forward and was baptized and 



MEMORIAL SERVICES 147 



re-admltted into the Church under the name of 
the one who had gone, with the thought that 
thus being baptized, he might be baptized into 
his spirit to carry on the work and live the 
life of the one who had gone. Now that Dr. 
Devins has passed on, there is a call for some 
of us to be baptized, baptized with the spirit 
of his wide and almost unlimited philan- 
thropy, baptized into the spirit of brother- 
hood and love for the friendless that so char- 
acterized his life — to be baptized in the 
spirit of God and of the work of Christ Jesus 
which so distinguished his character." 

At Hope Chapel, 339 East Fourth Street, 
New York, a memorial service for Dr. Dev- 
ins, was also held Thursday, October 19. Dr. 
Devins was pastor of Hope Chapel for ten 
years and the people who worshiped there 
under his leadership gathered to add their 
tribute of esteem and love. Several earnest 
addresses were given by former fellow-work- 
ers who had labored with Dr. Devins on the 
East Side. 



CHAPTER XIX 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 

Among other organizations, the following, 
with which Dr. Devins was identified either 
as a manager, director or active worker, 
passed resolutions of sorrow, appreciation 
and sympathy: The General Assembly of 
the Presbyterian Church; the New York Pres- 
bytery; the New York Tribune Fresh Air 
Fund; the Presbyterian Union of New York; 
the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions; 
the Board of Counselors of the American Fe- 
male Guardian Society, the Executive Council 
and the Board of Managers of the same; the 
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ; 
the Association for Improving the Condition 
of the Poor; the Board of Directors of the 
New York State Hospital for Incipient Pul- 
monary Tuberculosis ; the American Seamen's 
Friend Society; the Tent Evangel Committee 
of New York; the Twenty-third Street Pres- 
byterian Church of New York City; the 
Seventh Presbyterian Church of New York 
City, and the Negro Fresh Air Fund. 
These minutes contain much of significance 
but cannot be reproduced in this volume. 
The minute adopted by the Presbyterian 

148 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 149 

General Assembly was prepared by the Rev. 
Dr. Richard S. Holmes of Philadelphia, who 
has since died, and was as follows: 

" The One Hundred and Twenty-fourth 
General Assembly in an hour of solemn mem- 
ory of those servants of God, ministers of our 
Church, who have been taken from our num- 
ber during the past year, adopts the follow- 
ing Memorial Minute with reference to the 
life and services of the late John Bancroft 
Devins, D. D., editor of the New York Ob- 
server, who for twenty-eight years faithfully 
and efficiently reported the proceedings of 
the Assembly. 

Resolved, That the General Assembly 
puts on record its high appreciation of the 
late John Bancroft Devins, D. D., pastor, 
journalist and Christian gentleman, who gave 
the whole of a singularly unselfish life to the 
cause of Christ. His service to the Church, 
to the neglected children of the poor in New 
York, and to the interests of truth, are 
worthy of a praise we cannot speak, and we 
offer to Mrs. Devins and her bereaved circle 
the sympathy of a Church that had learned 
to love and prize Dr. Devins, not only for 
what he was, but for what he strove to be." 

At a meeting of the Tribune Fresh Air 
Fund Aid Society, held February 2, 19 12, the 
following minute was unanimously adopted: 



ISO JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

" The Rev. John Bancroft Devins, D. D., 
LL. D., manager of the Tribune Fresh Air 
Fund Aid Society of the City of New York, 
closed his life of usefulness in the fifty-fifth 
year of his age on August 26, 191 1, to the 
great loss of the Society and the grief of its 
Trustees, with whom he had been associated 
since 1907. 

His activities and interests reached round 
the globe and touched everywhere the hearts 
of men of all sorts and conditions. Nothing 
that concerned the betterment of his fellow 
man failed to attract his sympathy, which 
did not spend itself in mere sentiment, but 
found expression in active and efficient help- 
fulness. 

His life upon earth is ended, but its record 
and remembrance will continue long to ex- 
cite the gratitude of the multitudes whom he 
helped and to keep alive the high regard of 
those with whom he cooperated in good works. 

Such a record will be the special inspira- 
tion of his family, to whom the Trustees of 
the Tribune Fresh Air Fund Aid Society re- 
spectfully extend their sympathy. 
By direction of the Board." 

(Signed) Whitelaw Reid, 

President. 
(Signed) E. L. Rossiter, 

Secretary. 

lie llilli . ' 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 151 



The Presbyterian Union of New York, 
by its Executive Committee, unanimously 
adopted the following minute " in grateful 
appreciation of the efficient services of our 
late secretary and treasurer, the Rev. John 
Bancroft Devins, D. D., LL.D., who was 
called to his rest and reward on August 26, 
after but two days' illness." 

" Dr. Devins was born in this city on Sep- 
tember 26, 1856; received his early educa- 
tion in Camden, N. Y., and at Elizabeth, N. 
J., worked his way through college as a re- 
porter on The Tribune; graduated from New 
York University in 1882 and from The 
Union Theological Seminary in 1887; li- 
censed by New York Presbytery, May, 1887 ; 
ordained June, 1888 ; pastor of Hope Chapel, 
1888; in 1 90 1 he took charge of the English 
work of the Broome Street Tabernacle. In 
1898 he became managing editor of The 
New York Observer, and in May, 1905, its 
proprietor. In 1907 he became also man- 
ager of the Tribune Fresh Air Fund. The 
degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred 
upon him by Center College, Danville, Ky., 
in June, 1901; that of M. A., by his Alma 
Mater in 1903, and that of Doctor of Laws 
by Huron College in 1909. 

His published works are 1 An Observer in 
the Philippines/ 1 On the Way to Hwai 



1 52 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

Yuen ' and ■ The Classic Mediterranean.' 
He was also the author of the hymn, ' Jesus 
Saviour, We Would See Thee.' 

Dr. Devins was an indefatigable worker, 
and withal preserved a sweet Christian spirit, 
which led him to become to his brethren 
4 John the Beloved.' 

We shall greatly miss him and his pains- 
taking work that contributed largely to the 
success of the Union in recent years. 

The whole Church will miss him and his 
efficient services by voice and pen; the 1 1,000 
poor children of the tenements who were an- 
nually sent to the country by him as manager 
of the Tribune Fresh Air Fund are weeping 
for him, and the many societies with which he 
was identified will feel his loss. 

He realized his cherished wish that he 
4 die in the harness,' and his transition from 
an overworked brain and heart to the rest 
and joy of the Master's presence was sud- 
den and unexpected. 

We shall not forget his unobtrusive Chris- 
tion character, his unselfish devotion, his sin- 
cere consecration and his conspicuous loyalty 
in connection with every branch of church or 
philanthropic work with which he associated 
himself. We thank God for Dr. Devins and 
the splendid work He wrought in him and by 
him. 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 153 

We would not bring him back; but our 
hearts go out in loving sympathy to the de- 
voted wife and step-son who remain, and 
with them we say of our friend: 

Good-night, beloved; we will meet you in 
the morning." 

James Yereance 
Silas F. Hallock 
Fleming H. Revell 
Committee on Minute. 

Sept. 15, 1911. 

Only a few extracts can be given from the 
letters that have poured in upon Mrs. Devins 
from all parts of the world as the news of the 
death of Dr. Devins traveled to those in dis- 
tant lands where his occasional presence and 
help had meant so much to toilers in lone- 
liness and obscurity as well as from the heart 
of the great city where he lived and labored. 
One or two however must be given at length : 

" Dr. Devins' translation is a calamity to 

our Church at this juncture. His wise 

course in the Observer has done much to help 

to peace and rest." 

* * * 

u I want to say first that while I sorrow, I 
cannot feel one regret for Dr. Devins. He 
lived a wonderful, a glorious life, and it 
ended most enviably — a brief transit from 
fullness of vigor and service to fullness of 



154 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

eternal life and perfect service. His life was 
not brief. He lived, really lived, at least 
the lives of live or six ordinarily successful 
men. We do not regret that our Lord lived 
on earth so many years less than Dr. Devins 
did; nor that he lived on earth so many years 
less than some of us are living. Thousands 
of good and successful men work on to sev- 
enty, eighty, ninety years, without doing a 
hundredth part the good that Dr. Devins did. 
He is living on earth to-day in thousands of 
characters made happier, better, more use- 
ful because he lived — because he lived they 
live also. 

Possibly, I do not know, he might have 
been with us yet many years if it had been 
possible for him to think chiefly of himself, 
to forget his passion for others in taking 
care of his health, but who could wish it so? 
The very power of his passion to work for 
the world gave him power not otherwise pos- 
sible over others, other events, other insti- 
tutions. Sacrifice is as essential to great serv- 
ice as Calvary is to the salvation of the 
world. Dr. Devins, forgetting his work in 
taking care of himself, would have been an- 
other man than he was, one we do not know 
when we think of him, not the man who 
molded men and shaped affairs and always 
for the divine kingdom. Suppose he had de- 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 155 



clined the Fresh Air Fund Work this year, 
would it have been better for him to stay 
here longer, doing unspeakably less, than it 
is for him to go with the love and gratitude 
of the seven or eight thousand poor little ones 
he sent into God's fields this summer? God's 
acre where you will lay the worn-out, splendid 
machine to rest after its fully doing its glo- 
rious work in the world, will be God's acre 
indeed to one who rests there after leading 
the poor children, His little ones, out into 
the open acres of God's world commonly 
closed to them. I say it is a shining and glo- 
rious close to a life to which also those great 
adjectives belong. I say he is enviable. 

' The world will be so much poorer for 
his going,' we say in such a case. Will it? 
I cannot feel sure it will. After the tidings 
came this morning, I went out of doors and 
gave my mind leave to follow its own devices 
for an hour or more. It went back over 
the wonderful years, made wonderful so 
largely by the presence of Dr. Devins in 
them. Seen in the light that floods out of 
the disciple's grave, each incident took new 
meaning and power. The meditation of the 
hour — and it will be so of many future hours 
— found a mordant in the sorrowful news to 
fix it forever deeply in mind, heart, character. 
The death of such a man, like the death of 



156 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

our Lord, instantly and forever magnifies a 
thousand times the power of his work and ex- 
ample. 

Because Dr. Devins has been led out 
into the fresher air, the lovely fields, the 
fuller service and glory of the Land that is 
fairer than day, how many who have watched 
him and shared in some degree the spirit he 
stirred in them, will now say: 4 Well, then, 
since he has laid down the tools, I must do 
more, much more, in the work he gave him- 
self to! ' Will ten say so? a score? a hun- 
dred? a thousand? That last number is a 
minimum, I think. 1 Except a corn of wheat 
fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; 
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.' 
As with the Master, so with the servant. 

His distinguishing qualities throughout 
his life were unfailing courtesy with all his 
downright force, sympathy ready, deep, last- 
ing, and always a passion of love and loyalty, 
— wonderful loyalty — to his Lord and all 
his own nearest — and among those we must 
reckon always the under dog in the fight, the 
handicapped, the poor and lonely, the ones, 
in short, to whom his Master would have 
been most loyal. Ah, how one loved him 
who knew him ! " 

* * * 

" This is the tribute not of an intimate 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 157 



friend, but of a comparative stranger. Ten 
thousand men, doubtless, have as much claim 
to be counted in the circle of his friends as I 
have. I have known of him and esteemed 
him highly for his work's sake many years, 
but came into personal converse with him 
only a few times. 

The first time I ever saw him was at a 
meeting of the Presbyterian General As- 
sembly — whether at the meeting held in 
Cleveland or Philadelphia or Saratoga I can- 
not recall. I was a commissioner, and he 
was reporting, I presume, for The New York 
Tribune, In order to hear the speakers 
from the platform and the floor to the best 
advantage I moved up into the seat assigned 
to the newspaper reporters. With some mis- 
givings as to whether I was not intruding 
upon forbidden territory, I took my seat next 
to a hearty looking young man — who looked 
up from his notes, gave me a welcome and 
made me feel at home. At proper intervals 
we fell into conversation and plied each other 
with questions about men and measures be- 
fore the Assembly. It might be said we be- 
came well acquainted, though we did not 
know each other's name. All I knew was 
that he was a reporter for a New York paper, 
and that he seemed to have more than a re- 
portorial interest in the proceedings of the 



158 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

Assembly. I did not identify him until 
years afterwards — perhaps twenty — and 
then it was at Lake Mohonk. Then I said 
to myself : 

' John B. Devins, sitting on the right hand 
end of the speakers' and chairman's table, 
and reporting the proceedings of this con- 
ference for the Associated Press is the man 
who extended to me the hospitality of a seat 
at the reporters' table in the General As- 
sembly many years ago.' Thereupon, at the 
close of the morning session, I sought him 
out, and we exchanged the right hand of fel- 
lowship. 

Another glimpse I had of him was on the 
Ulster & Delaware Railroad. He was on 
one of his errands of mercy in behalf of the 
Fresh Air Fund and his destination was, I 
believe, Shokan; soon to be annihilated, with 
other villages, by the vast Ashokan reservoir. 
He saluted me with the caption under which 
I was occasionally writing for The Observer, 
and then began to question me in regard to 
my past, present and future. Did he not 
have the happy faculty of making a man feel 
that he was interested in him? At least, 
after conversing with him, I concluded that 
he was as familiar with the resorts and re- 
treats in the Catskills as with the streets of 
New York. And through him many city 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 159 



children were made acquainted with the green 
pastures and mountain brooks of this unsur- 
passed summer resort. Was he not a good 
shepherd ? 

The last time I met him was at the close 
of a Mohonk conference, on the Walkill Val- 
ley Railroad, when we were all en route to 
our several homes. His wife and other 
members of his household were with him. 
So it was not as the editor of The New York 
Observer, nor superintendent of the Fresh 
Air Fund, nor secretary of the Mohonk con- 
ference, but as a family man I saw him. 
Haying introduced him to my wife, he in turn 
introduced her to Mrs. Devins and daugh- 
ter, Mrs. Penfield; and a most charming visit 
all the way to Kingston ensued. How happy 
he seemed ! He reminded one of a bird let 
out of a cage, or a boy set free from school. 
He impressed me as a man who, if he en- 
joyed himself much, enjoyed his family more, 
and rejoiced in the Lord always ! And his 
joy he communicated to others. 

To my long-standing admiration for him I 
that day added love. And now to love is 
added the hope that we shall meet again in 
the City where the Lamb is the light thereof 
and His servants — with His name in their 
foreheads — joyfully and forever serve 
Him." 



i6o JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

u We mourn Dr. Devins as truly as though 
he were our own brother. In the Audito- 
rium at Northfield Dr. Frances paid a beauti- 
ful tribute to Dr. Devins' work for North- 
field, helping for years to spread the Gospel 
here preached to others, no small share of 
the success being through him. The Rev. 
John McDowell spoke of his ministry to the 
children, saying ' he believed Dr. Devins had 
really laid down his life for others.' I can 
well believe that, for I know of his devotion 
to the various homes and institutions for the 
relief of suffering ones. He surely fought a 
good fight and is now entered into his rest. 
But we will all be so lonely without him here ; 
for this we mourn. But for him i to be with 

Christ is far better.' " 

* * * 

" I remember that Dr. Devins toiled long 
and hard at work which sorely taxes strength. 
I never knew him to lower the flag in our 
battle. He was a prince among men. How 
he loved to uplift all who were cast down. 
The last time we talked together he ex- 
pressed the firm determination, if ever he 
were permitted to minister to a church again, 
to be a most faithful pastor. That is the 
phase of work in the churches which he felt 
was often sadly neglected. Some men 
shrivel and harden as the years fly by. He 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 161 



grew stronger and tenderer. If the hour of 
his home-going had come, as we most rever- 
ently believe, then how kind it was of the 
Heavenly Father to take him, without long 
suffering, from the activities here to those 
yonder." 

* * * 

" It is hard to realize that Dr. Devins' 
work here is over. He was the friend of so 
many. He has made rough paths smooth 
and crooked paths straight and has shown 
others, by his works, what a glorious thing 
it is to know and love God. Thousands of 
little children he has made so happy. We 
can surely say, 4 The world is better for his 
having been in it. 5 The world will miss him 
sorely. No one went to him in vain. There 
was always a ready smile, a warm hand-clasp, 
and no matter how busy he might be, one was 
made to feel welcome. Dr. Devins certainly 
helped to make our life brighter and 
smoother. The word friend has taken a new 
meaning." 

* * * 

" A noble character has passed on to the 
higher service. No words can adequately ex- 
press the personal characteristic which we es- 
teem the most. We may number the years 
from the day of one's birth to the day of 
one's death — we may mention the deeds 



1 62 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

which seem most noteworthy — the struggles 
and successes which are most interesting and 
characteristic — and after all we have to say, 
there remains the painful consciousness that 
the best is still unspoken. 

" ' We cannot think of him as idle; 
He must be a toiler still ; 
God giveth that work to the angels, 
Who fittest the task fulfill 

" 1 And somewhere yet in the hill-tops, 
Of the city that hath no pain 
He will wait in the Heavenly mansion, 

To bid us a welcome again.' " 

* * * 

" Ever since we were associated in the 
work of the East Side Federation and in the 
relief operation of 1903-4, of which Dr. 
Devins was the heart and the head in the dis- 
trict about Hope Chapel, I have esteemed 
him as a king among men and one of New 
York's best citizens. We all have the com- 
forting and inspiring memory of a helpful 

and brotherly life." 

* * * 

" Dr. Devins is remembered for his large 
work on the East Side, as well as in other 
parts of the city, but particularly by us of the 
City Mission because of his work in connec- 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 163 

tion with Broome Street Tabernacle. While 
all of our workers held him in highest es- 
teem, it is at Broome Street and the Italian 
West Side Mission that the people have 
special affection for him because of what he 
has done for the members of those two 
churches and their children. Everywhere I 
go among our Italian people I hear from 
young and old expressions of affection for 
him who lived so well and did so much. 

I am just home from a long journey and 
my first greeting was, ' Dr. Devins has passed 
away.' He was my true friend and in ways 
of which the world did not know he helped 
me. I had for him the sincerest affection. 
The Church has lost a great man and The 
Observer has had its heart taken away. I 
wish I could pay a just tribute to Dr. Dev- 
ins' greatness and goodness. I consider him 

one of the truest men I have ever known." 
* * * 

" When three thousand miles away on the 
way home and looking forward to seeing and 
telling Dr. Devins all about it, the wire 
brought me the sad news of his death. That 
I could not grasp his hand again was almost 
unbelievable. It was hard to realize that one 
of the kindest hearts that ever beat was 
stilled. 

For twelve years one of my chief joys 



1 64 JOHN BANCROFT DEVINS 

has been a close and constant association with 

the well-loved man who had just laid down 

his earthly tasks, so many and so hard and 

every one having as its ultimate aim the good 

of some one else." 

* * * 

" Everything that has been written by ap- 
preciative friends is true. What then was 
his peculiar charm under the spell of which 
we all came ? He was courteous — yes, al- 
ways, not with a superficial courtesy of man- 
ner only but the true courtesy of a kind heart. 
He was unselfish; it was his nature to con- 
sider others first and no matter what stress 
was upon him he ever made time to listen 
and to advise and to help. It was these 
splendid qualities of courtesy, of absolute for- 
getfulness of self and of kindness of heart 
that, welded together into a true and all- 
embracing sympathy, made those who knew 
him love him. A dear friend has gone and 
the passing years will but serve to show how 
much he was to me and memory will keep 
the picture of our association together as one 
of its choicest gems." 

HIS FAVORITE POEM 
Dr. Devins carried much poetry in his 
memory, often repeating certain favorite 
stanzas on occasions, when they best ex- 



RESOLUTIONS AND LETTERS 165 



pressed his convictions or emotions. This 
poem of Whittier's probably found most 
frequent use as expressing the deepest cur- 
rents of his life endeavor and feeling. 

1 

MY TRIUMPH 
The autumn-time has come ; 
On woods that dream of bloom, 
And over purpling vines, 
The low sun fainter shines. 

Let the thick curtain fall; 
I better know than all 
How little I have gained, 
How vast the unattained. 

Others shall sing the song, 
Others shall right the wrong, 
Finish what I begin, 
And all I fail of win. 

What matter, I or they? 
Mine or another's day, 
So the right word is said 
And life the sweeter made ? 



THE END 



DEC 14 1912 



027 211 437 7 



